MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
MY TREASURE CORNER
Frontispiece
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Background of Sir Henry living's Chinese curtain.
On the table rest the model of his hand, by E. Onslow
Ford, R.A., graciously lent by Sir Gerald du Marnier;
Irving's holiday hat ; Irving's marked copy of King
Richard II.
On the shelf : Irving's bust by Herbert Hampton.
On the wall : Picture of Irving as Mephistopheles ;
picture of lace collar worn by Edmund Kean in " Hamlet."
On the easel are the handkerchief used by Irving, the
last time he played " The Bells," and the portrait of
H. B. Irving by R. Eves.
On the pedestal : Bust of Mrs. H. B. Irving (Dorothea
Baird) as Trilby, by Francis Bacon.
MY
SENTIMENTAL SELF
BY
MRS. ARIA
WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
FOREWORD BY
STEPHEN McKENNA
LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD.
1922
Printed in Great Britain at
The Mayflmutr Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY BELOVED SISTER
JULIA FRANKAU
(FRANK DANBY),
FOREWORD
WHEN Mr, Samuel Travers Carter was
invited to give his truthful opinion of
the young Lady Mickleham, he ended
with the words : " Those who have been admitted
to the enjoyment of her friendship are unanimous
in discouraging all others from seeking a similar
privilege."
Those who are required to share Mrs. Aria's friend-
ship with any unworthy new arrival that chances to
read her reminiscences have declined, almost without
exception, to abet her disastrous habit of making new
friends. She should be strictly rationed, they feel, if
the first comers are to have their just allowance of her
gay philosophy and effervescent wit.
The one exception can only defend himself by
pleading that she will break down any monopoly that
may be established in her friendship. Alternatively,
he may argue that, when an introduction is stamped
as superfluous, it must also be innocuous : of herself
Mrs. Aria says, " I am rapidly becoming amongst
treats or penances to the younger generation, which
does not even knock at my door but walks straight in.
... I am a place of entertainment, a point of pilgrim-
age like St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, or the Zoo-
logical Gardens. ... I am the oldest inhabitant of the
stalls, the lady Methuselah on the mat at the Box
Offices, and as well known as the Tower of London."
vii
viii FOREWORD
Before she can be profitably introduced, it is
necessary, therefore, to find someone to whom Mrs.
Aria is not already known. If any have the temerity
to confess that they have never identified the author
of " Mrs. A.'s Diary/' in Truth, they will be rewarded
by meeting her " sentimental self r in this book.
Her older friends will remember that Dolly Mickleham
insisted on Mr. Carter's changing his verdict till it
read : " Those who have been admitted to the enjoy-
ment of her friendship are unanimous in encouraging
all others to seek a similar privilege."
STEPHEN McKENNA.
LINCOLN'S INN,
31 March, 1922.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ABOUT MYSELF IN CHILDHOOD . . . . i
II. ABOUT MY GIRLHOOD AND MY BROTHER JAMES . 15
III. ABOUT MY MARRIAGE AND ADVENTURE INTO JOUR-
NALISM ........ 27
IV. MORE ABOUT MYSELF AS A JOURNALIST . . 40
V. ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA ..... 54
VI. ABOUT CECIL RALEIGH, ALFRED SUTRO, THE MIL-
HOLLAND FAMILY AND W. T. STEAD . . 70
VII. ABOUT HENRY IRVING ..... 84
VIII. ABOUT HENRY IRVING . . . . 99
IX. ABOUT HENRY IRVING 114
X. ABOUT HENRY IRVING 128
XI. ABOUT THE SONS OF HENRY IRVING . . . 144
XII. ABOUT JAMES K. HACKETT, MRS. J. E. PANTON,
W. L. GEORGE AND JAMES B. PAGAN . .158
XIII. ABOUT H. G. WELLS, CONSTANCE COLLIER, SIR
HERBERT TREE, HAROLD BEGBIE AND SIR GERALD
DU MAURIER ....... 173
XIV. ABOUT W. L. COURTNEY, MARY FULTON AND GEORGE
MOORE 186
XV. ABOUT LILIAN BRAITHWAITE, SIR GEORGE AND LADY
ALEXANDER, ISIDORE DE LARA, AND ROBERT BEN-
NETT ........ 198
XVI. ABOUT LETTERS AND POSSESSIONS . . . .213
XVII. ABOUT MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS . . . 229
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MY TREASURE CORNER ..... Frontispiece
Displaying as background Sir Henry Irving's Chinese
curtain. On the table rest the model of his hand, by
E. Onslow Ford, R.A., graciously lent by Sir Gerald du
Maurier ; Irving's holiday hat ; Irving's marked copy of
King Richard II. On the shelf : Irving's bust by
Herbert Hampton. On the wall : Picture of Irving as
Mephistopheles ; picture of lace collar worn by Edmund
Kean in " Hamlet." On the easel are the handkerchief
used by Irving, the last time he played " The Bells," and
the portrait of H. B. Irving by R. Eves. On the pedestal :
Bust of Mrs. H. B. Irving (Dorothea Baird) as Trilby, by
Francis Bacon.
Facing page
MY MOTHER SEWING BABY CLOTHES .... 6
MY BROTHER, JAMES DAVIS (OWEN HALL) ... 20
COVER OF " THE WORLD OF DRESS," by Wm. Nicholson . 38
MY SISTER, JULIA FRANKAU (FRANK DANBY) ... 58
MYSELF LOOKING AT MY SISTER'S PHOTOGRAPH . . 68
MY DAUGHTER AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN .... 86
SIR HENRY IRVING IN HOLIDAY TIME .... 96
SIR HENRY IRVING IN His DRESSING-ROOM . . .106
STUDY OF EDMUND KEAN, by Clint 116
DEATH MASK OF SIR HENRY IRVING . . .. .142
MODEL CASKET USED IN " THE MERCHANT OF VENICE " . 150
SIR HENRY IRVING AND His SON LAURENCE . . .156
JAMES BERNARD FAGAN 170
H. G. WELLS 176
W. L. COURTNEY, M.A., LL.D 190
ISIDORE DE LARA 206
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi
Facing page
SIR THOMAS BROCK, K.C.B 212
ARNOLD BENNETT . . . . . . . .218
BUST OF SIR HENRY IRVING AS HAMLET, early design, by
E. Onslow Ford, R.A 222
HUGH WALPOLE 234
ST. JOHN ERVINE 236
CORNER OF FITZROY SQUARE, by C. R. W. Nevinson . 240
ELIZABETH IRVING 242
" I PITY the man who can travel from Dan to
Beersheba, and cry 'Tis all barren — and so it is ;
and so is all the world to him who does not cultivate
the fruits it offers. I declare, said I, clapping my
hands cheerily together, that was I in a desert I
would find out wherewith in it to call forth my
affection." — LAURENCE STERNE.
MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
CHAPTER I
ABOUT MYSELF IN CHILDHOOD
^HERE is much attraction in writing an
autobiography by request, and this is com-
manded by many friends, who seem to
imagine that from my garden of memories I shall
hand them all handsome bouquets.
There is one forceful objector to the scheme and
he is convinced that indiscretion being the better part
of biography, I should avoid all temptation to com-
mit it.
" Don't," he said, uplifting his square chin, glaring
fiercely prohibitive, while he thrust his fingers through
his sturdy crop of hair and asserted with aggressive
decisiveness " personalities are vulgar."
I vowed to avoid the contemporary way and I
protested that I would dilate neither on the luncheons
I had eaten, nor on the lovers I had devoured.
" Don't do it," he reiterated, but the lurking in-
dulgence in his eyes enticed my obstinate optimism to
brave his counsel. And it may come to pass that he
will prove to have been the one wise man, readers
with reviewers uprising to regret that his good advice
went by the way of much other.
2 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
There was once an American who decided that the
ideal old age would be passed reading a book by
himself about himself, whilst a capable cook was
busy in his kitchen, and a silent servant sat to atten-
tion in his ante-room.
Such happening would not be my Canaan, while I
embark upon my Odyssey full sail with a garrulity
even beyond my age, and a prompt confession that
my chronology is of the strong and silent type. I
would not tell that age if I knew it, and I give warning
at once that I am unable to set down much in malice ;
I have so rarely suffered any that I could better sound
through my pages a snivelling echo of little Joe, " He
was very good to me, he was."
In the sunlight of my joys there have been many
to walk beside me, and there is a kindly multitude to
sit with me in the shadows.
I venture to plead the excuse for autobiography that
my life has so thoroughly interested me it seems
worth living over again in the written word. When
I look at my inkstand and see " the beaded bubbles
winking at the brim/1 I feel that those inky winks
invite the active pen.
And I am gratefully aware that even when I have
been but the idle liver of an empty day, the emptiness
of that day has heard some bright thing said and seen
some dear thing done by others. Like Rupert Brooke's
soldier-hero, I have " gone proudly friended " ; there-
fore, of course, I realise the outrageous solecism
I commit while indicating " Who's what " amongst
my acquaintances.
Expansive biographers of the mighty have not been
vivisectors, and death has preceded their commen-
ABOUT MYSELF IN CHILDHOOD 3
taries, but I make only the slightest sketches, I am
the easy impressionist while I stand respectfully in the
lesser circle. Moreover, in my autobiography I must
be forgiven personalities because of the gregarious
germ which is incurably set in me, born I have no
doubt in the first moment I opened my eyes to meet
those of my nurse. I feel sure I invited her to con-
versation and that I gurgled a reply to her acquiescent
" Was urns."
In contemporary fiction and not without precedent,
there is leaning towards the word-photograph, and the
romance with a key opens the door to much amusement
alike for the friends and the enemies of the lampooned.
In accurate presentment of some famous fools or
knaves, their gait, gesture, features, or complexions,
an injured author may salve his wounds, real or
imagined.
From one woman on another with flaccid drab face
and bulging pale blue eyes beneath thick crinkling
grey hair, such comment as " she looks like a distin-
guished bad oyster " is a bonne-bouche for every
digestion.
I will have none of such, but will label honestly
those I venture to admire, praise and blame, and I
will offer no apology for my egotism born of intro-
spection which reveals characteristics. For charac-
teristics bestow interest on the narrative which depends
upon the circumstances where they led.
To begin near the beginning, the atmosphere of my
earlier childhood was tainted by the smell of collodion.
My father, who had planned for himself a career as
an artist, was forced by the demands of a family of
nine to become a photographer ; at least he brought
4 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
his art and his charm to the task of posing sitters who
thronged the studio, which was approached by a
narrow bridge from the first floor landing of the house
where I was born in Bruton Street. Across this bridge
we children were forbidden to wander, and accordingly
we wandered, into a dark room of mystery pervaded
by the smell of chemicals and an active demon named
Martin, who was for ever stirring a stick round a dark
fluid in an oblong dish.
Artistic photography was then in its infancy, and
my father was amongst the first to nurture it. In
boyhood there had been much promise to him of
achievement as a painter, and for his needs then he
could find a patron to dispense sufficient remunera-
tion for copies of the masterpieces in the National
Gallery.
Behind me as I write hangs an example of his skill
with an " Assumption " by Murillo : experts have
assured me of the ability shown in its colour and its
draughtsmanship. On me the picture throws a
romantic glamour due to its association with the time
of my parents' betrothal, when my mother watched
anxiously for the twilight which would curtail my
father's industry and hasten their meeting.
My father was remarkably handsome, and my
mother adored him for twenty-five years and his
memory for a further twenty-five. Always I was
jealous and resentful of him ; he absorbed so much
of her attention, and when, during the last months of
his life, she would come down to our breakfast and
our early morning prayers, ritual never omitted, for
we were reared strictly in the Jewish faith, I was
angered at her absent-mindedness, distressed by her
ABOUT MYSELF IN CHILDHOOD 5
tear-stained eyes and irritated by the persistent " don't
make such a noise when you go upstairs for your
boots."
Like most young folks, I was as ignorant as in-
tolerant of illness, and the noise of my father's con-
stant cough, and the smell of his inseparable cigar,
vexed me, in alliance with the supreme importance
attached to his every word and movement. I was
impatient of his ways altogether, quick to discern that
he was not at all attached to the majority of his
children, that he took, indeed, an unbearably critical
attitude towards them, and that he was exasperatingly
prone to make fun of them.
" Bella/' he would say to my mother when he met
me and my adored sister Julia on the stairs, " why do
those girls look like housemaids ? "
I suspect his twinkling eyes were just enough in
their dispraisement : our hands were red, our hair
brushed straightly back from foreheads hideously high,
and we were pale and dull with nondescript features
lacking every attribute of fascination. Children are
sensitive to comment, however amusing, and my father
was possessed of the humour microbe which later on
I tried to claim as inheritance but knew to be the sole
property of my brother James, whose earliest certifi-
cates from school bore the underlined remark, " A
very good boy, but a little too witty."
" Bella, my dear, we must have a house on the river
with a sloping lawn," my father would say whilst he
contemplated our numbers, and my mother would
smile and I, never doubting his sincerity, would grow
hurt and sullen with a quick grasp of the hint that I
had been marked superfluous.
6 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
I hold other special grievances against my father,
because during our rare encounters my fear of his
ridicule robbed me of thought and speech whilst I
wanted desperately to secure his approval. I would
prepare a piece to play to him on the piano, and the
ceremony of the performance was actual pain to me,
and doubtless agony to him. " She must get on with
her mathematics " was his sarcastic solace the last time
we suffered together from my rendering of a Czerny
study.
Again he would baulk me with a sudden recollection
that I was accredited with some ability for sums.
Indeed I became so expert in algebra that my tutor,
Mr. Gilmour, allowed me to help him to set some test
papers for the examination of the College of Preceptors.
Greatly clever in the schoolroom, I was a shy fool
elsewhere. In the dining-room, where we were all
marshalled for dessert, and pledged to enjoy cracking
and peeling my father's walnuts, he would assail me
with the simplest problems and I would fail utterly to
arrive at any correct solution. His slightest glance
left me dumb and confused and convinced of an
incurable stupidity. Yet had I only known him when
I was a woman, infallibly I should have shared my
mother's devotion to him. I have read some of his
beautiful letters to her to learn from them his tender-
ness and his fun, whilst I recognised his artistic and
literary instincts in charming verselets and small
drawings which beset his admirable caligraphy. I
treasure now a little drawing that he made of my
mother when she was sewing baby clothes.
I wish I had understood him earlier, and I envied
my eldest sister, Ellen, her chance : I know now I
MY MOTHER
DRAWN BY MY FATHER WHILE SHE WAS SEWING BABY CLOTHES.
To facs page 6
ABOUT MYSELF IN CHILDHOOD 7
should have numbered my father proudly amongst my
friends.
But of all his children, he only cared for three, for
that daughter Ellen whose mind was attuned to his ;
for Florrie, a baby with golden hair and blue eyes ; and
for his son James, who, under the name of " Owen
Hall," which he selected as suitable to his perennial
impecuniosity, became a popular figure in Bohemia.
The family somehow appeared to divide itself into
distinct parts. There were Ellen and James at the top ;
and at the end Julia — " Frank Danby " — and Eliza,
I — who write. Four other members " also ran," and
an ante-final effort was Florrie, established as the pretty
one, and maintaining the justice of the appellation in
her picture by F. Markham Skipworth, which now
displays its pale elegance in her country home, where
she acts the willing hostess to any member of the new
or old generation who may demand rest or recreation.
But it must be admitted that Florrie once fell to
the desire of writing, and she published a novel, The
Luddingtons.
1 You are the beauty of the family," we advised her,
and she accepted the verdict as condemning the volume
to solitude. Now she devotes herself to the growing
of fine grandchildren and the planting of rock gardens
which blossom always more beautifully as rock gardens
will. She married Marcus Collins, one of the best men
I ever knew, though he boasts a brusqueness, scarcely
rivalled by Carlyle in working hours interrupted by
pain or a smoking chimney.
What good M. E. Collins did during the war will
never be known, for he will never admit that he did
anything, but so far as was in him as architect, man
8 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
and citizen he was lavish in the giving. Beyond the
years of active service at the Front, he was the man
who stayed at home to help to adapt many buildings
to hospital needs, slaving at plans while bereft of all
assistance, son and daughters alike in uniform, and
clerks in the field.
But if I would retain his regard " the rest is silence/'
broken by the ticking of the forty old clocks whose
collection in perfect striking order is amongst his peace
hobbies, deplored ungratefully enough by his guests.
Julia and I, inseparable pair, showed our propen-
sities before our first decade had sped, when I would
babble of pantomimes and dress, proving my efficiency
in trimming a hat or f rocking a fairy doll, and she would
be at a table aloof, scribbling and re-scribbling little
stones, wherein I was queen of romance and she was
a lady-in-waiting on literature.
Amongst her most cherished " howlers "' perpe-
trated then was her comment on an eight in a boat
race.
" All rowed fast, but none so fast as our hero."
Julia has been known to express an opinion, that
my devotion to the drama and to dress will find me in
old age an established favourite at a lunatic asylum,
where I think I am Autolycus, and I dangle ribbons to
make and unmake the same hat. I wonder ! anyhow
my love of theatres and of clothes yet exists, and her
first ambition to write lasted throughout her too short
years, even unto their heroic close, and her dying
achievement of Twilight, when her three sons were in
khaki.
Julia and I walked together, learnt together, talked
together, and slept together in a large double bed, and
ABOUT MYSELF IN CHILDHOOD 9
her tale-telling ambitions were confided to me from
the age of seven.
:< Say good night to each other and go to sleep
quickly/' was Mother's formula, hopefully delivered.
Not a chance of such proceeding ; Julia told me
tales until midnight, and even then I murmured
greedily, " Go on ! "
Our daily school, where boys and girls were received,
was conducted by a Miss Belisario, and under her
guidance many Jews, Jessels, Mocattas, Sebags and
Montefiores, all present-time magnates, took with us
their first lessons.
Miss Belisario was a Jewess of the most rigid kind,
a severe disciplinarian regarding the traditions of our
faith as sacrosanct, and incidentally allotting to me a
prize for reciting the ten commandments in Hebrew.
I wish now that I could remember them to faithful
observance even in English.
" Young ladies, don't laugh but say the blessing,"
she would urge with uplifted hand when she entered
the classroom, her brown wig well awry, to hear us
tittering during a thunderstorm. She was a stern and
stupendous figure, and reported to have written to
upbraid Charles Dickens for allotting the thief Fagin
to the Jewish race.
By the way, this course was followed by a number of
Jews, and in Forster's Life of Charles Dickens he speaks
of the benevolent old Jew in Our Mutual Friend being
presented as an unconscious agent of a rascal, in order
to wipe out the reproach against his Jew in Oliver
Twist.
The daily walk to our school initiated the order of
pocket-money, and Julia bought jumbles at three a
io MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
penny to give two of these to Eliza, who devoured a
large bun entirely on her own account. I find in this
trifling incident the initial letter to the whole alphabet
of Julia's existence so far as I was concerned : two-
thirds of her jumbles — and many came to her lot —
were always for Eliza.
I think no literary dedication more touching in its
exaggeration than hers to me on the fly-leaf of her
novel, Concert Pitch.
" Dearest, you said recently that I had never dedi-
cated a book to you, and you said it as if you were a
little hurt that I had withheld the slight compliment.
Take this one then, it is no worse, perhaps better than
some of the others. You read it in synopsis and manu-
script ; without your sympathy and encouragement it
would certainly have been less adequate, but does not
this hold good for all I do ? It seems to me
1 There is no word of all my songs,
But unto thee belongs/
" FRANK DANBY."
I go back to Frank Danby in the making, as at all
times and circumstances I would, to justify our
mother's conviction, " If Eliza is satisfied with Julia,
and Julia is satisfied with Eliza, there is of course
nothing left to be desired." Those words came to
play the prophetic part as the gospel of my life.
My school-days ended barren to me of the least
knowledge, except those forgotten ten command-
ments ; and our education was rendered into the hands
of Mr. Gilmour and Madame Paul Lafargue, the
eldest daughter of Karl Marx.
ABOUT MYSELF IN CHILDHOOD n
Paul Laf argue, Editor of the Cri du People, was
undergoing imprisonment for some ultra-socialistic
article. I forget the exact circumstances, but I know
how fortunate we should have considered ourselves
in its result.
Madame Lafargue was a most remarkable and in-
teresting personality, never failing to reiterate her
opinion that we were of an abysmal ignorance which
she could never hope to plumb.
Whilst Julia, however, endeavoured earnestly to
atone, and under Madame Lafargue this should have
been easily possible, I became more and more frivolous,
taking heed only of Madame's beauty, of her elegance,
of her auburn Pompadour, her slim grace and the
quick cadences of her French. The sad circumstances
which led to her fate to instruct two such unworthy
little girls concerned me not at all ; but she must
have loved her husband very dearly, upholding his
cause with unswerving devotion, for when, as preacher
of an unwanted doctrine, he fell again within the arm
of a relentless law, and incurable illness threatened
with incurable poverty, she decided to avoid all further
efforts in the oblivion of death, which they sought
together.
I am conscious that about the time of her leaving us
the whole circumstances of our lives changed, our
tutor was dismissed and practically our education
ceased.
My father died while puffing at a cigar my mother
had lighted for him ; and, speaking his last words,
" You always know what I want, darling," made
summary of the blessed marriage.
The note of gaiety in our house was hushed to com-
12 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
plete silence, and there came great difficulties about
means, so that the enterprising Julia went forth to
work at any obtainable task, and found, as the earnest
seekers ever will, some outlet for her energy in the
accomplishment of Church embroidery, and addressing
envelopes for a Necropolis Company, whilst I followed
my unchangeable course of idleness, interrupting this
only by taking classes in dressmaking and millinery
for the exclusive benefit of myself.
Through James, married now, came all our pleasures,
and I could write a whole book with him in the fore-
front. He was a god of my early idolatry by reason of
his unvaried amiability to us. He would bring boxes
of chocolates, seats for a theatre, and an offer of a day
at the races. I suspect he was sorry for our dull time ;
certainly he endeavoured to enliven things.
We had, however, as few duties as pleasures, but
like all the young Jews of that period, we were taught
to show great respect to our elders, and these included
an uncle who belonged to the Galsworthy- Forsyth type,
and two aunts, bred on different sides of the house.
Uncle was a tremendous fellow, with ginger whiskers
and an absorbing interest in himself. He rarely spoke
of anyone else. He used always to announce to his
wife Sophia, " If either of us dies, I shall go and live
in Paris. "
His megalomania was splendid in its perfection. " I
have just heard poor A is ill. I must send my
footman round to enquire."
" Bella," he would dictate to my mother, " how are
you this morning ? I am feeling very well. You are
looking rather pale. Why don't you walk ? I walk,
that is the secret of my health. Walk, Bella, walk,"
ABOUT MYSELF IN CHILDHOOD 13
and he walked off, dying in middle age, so far as I can
remember, and I have not much desire to know
whether he walked up or down.
But the aunts were far more interesting, and they
were visited to order on alternate Saturdays, Saturday
afternoon being the great visiting time for all of us,
who punctually attended the Synagogue in the morning.
Both aunts were possessed of unforgettable attri-
butes, the one related to my mother being of the stern
aspect, deeply religious, and widely charitable. She
lived in magnificent state at a mansion with extensive
grounds in St. John's Wood, now given over to a
hospital.
All about her evinced wealth, dignity and an exalted
outlook on duty. A whole wing of her establishment
was devoted to her old mother, who with much cere-
mony would occasionally grant us audience and, as any
Pope might, would bless us solemnly on dismissing us
from her presence.
Aunt had a large family of children ; a score had
been granted to her, and but half a dozen translated,
while the surviving " young ladies " had their own
carriage and their own coachman, and also to our
greater content a capital croquet lawn and a monster
dolls' house replete with all the luxuries.
Notwithstanding the atmosphere of decorum and
divine grace, we passed some very merry hours up there
with them in St. John's Wood, and " the young
ladies " and myself often foregather now to talk of
them.
Aunt No. 2 was a sister of my father's, and of a
strikingly beautiful personality despite her forty-five
years. She lived in a huge house in Bayswater, and
14 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
dressed always in satin, black or purple, whilst over
her hair she draped a veil of white Limerick lace
which fell to the ground at the back, and was caught
tightly under her chin to her ears with diamond-
framed topaz brooches. Her mittened white fingers
were covered with rings, and her cheeks were not
quite innocent of rouge.
" You would look much better without all that stuff
upon your face," expostulated her brother, and she
would answer sapiently :
11 You haven't seen me without it."
She was a very amusing woman, and Julia and I
were always very glad to find ourselves with her. She
used to tell us many anecdotes about her servants,
about Maria " who was a very bad cook, but made
excellent button-holes " ; also of Brown, her rather
sad and faded manservant, never seen without white
cotton gloves.
He had the manners of a dancing master, would
enter the room with three steps to the right, three
steps to the left, and three up the centre to deposit a
tea-tray blazing in brightest silver in front of my
imperious aunt, who would signal to him for her high
satin footstool, and brush him aside until she was
ready for him to pirouette around with the filled tea-
cups.
Once at a dinner-party after a tremendous crash had
been heard outside the door, he distinguished himself
by approaching her with a deep bow, and whispered
words of comfort — " Only a few dirty plates, madam."
CHAPTER II
ABOUT MY GIRLHOOD AND MY BROTHER JAMES
I HAVE seldom indulged in the popular habit of
consulting the advertising fortune-tellers, but
someone of the less rigid outlook tempted me
to visit an oracle, who was proving his right to
illegal guineas, somewhere near the Strand.
His room was full and dark, and his method was
to demand some personal possession, purse or gloves,
or such-like, and then deliver the verdict.
To my amazement and denial at that time, this gentle-
man-in-office, whilst returning to me my handkerchief,
muttered with his eyes half shut, " Writing, writing,
writing, I can see nothing around you but writing. "
I cannot explain this, and never could, but there
was some strange fate at work to direct three members
of an ordinary family of commonplace birth, education
and environment towards the literary path.
James was definitely responsible for Julia's first
venture when he started his newspaper Pan, and
brought to our house Oscar and Willie Wilde, and one
Alfred Thompson, who was well known then as master
of theatrical dress, with a special leaning towards the
ballet and a singular dexterity of fingers with which
he could illustrate many dancing steps.
Oscar Wilde was a slender stripling, inclining towards
fat only in the face, and I would sit and gaze at him
15
1 6 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
with his chin in his hand, in silent wonder at his strange
slow utterances, while I respected, with no notion
what it implied, that " He had won the Newdigate."
How impressed I was with his soliloquy, all unin-
telligible as it was to me, on a girl he had met at six
o'clock in the morning in Co vent Garden Market.
" She carried a large bunch of lilies. How beautiful
you are ! I murmured, and she passed by in silence.
How beautiful/'
Both Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde became frequent
visitors, and in a public garden which spread its ill-
kept lumpish lawn behind our dwelling we often played
tennis together : Willie in a shirt showing some desire
to be divorced from the top of his trousers, and Oscar
in a high hat with his frock-coat tails flying and his
long hair waving in the breeze.
Julia's attempt at a parody of a villanelle by Oscar
Wilde which had appeared in The World led to an
interview with Edmund Yates, who found in it some
excuse for encouraging her to take up writing as a
career.
It is a coincidence that her first published lines
should have owed their existence to Oscar Wilde, and
that her novel The Sphinx's Lawyer had the same
inspiration, twenty-eight years having elapsed between-
whiles.
Julia dedicated The Sphinx's Lawyer to James.
:< Because you hate and loathe my book and its
subject, knowing all the violence of your antipathy
which can be summed up in a sentence, ' Such a
career is outside the region of art.' "
As the paper Pan went to popularity and thence
through an inexperienced direction to death, my
ABOUT MY GIRLHOOD 17
brother started, owned and edited in turn The Bat,
The Cuckoo and The Phoenix, whilst writing indus-
triously for The Sporting Times many paragraphs on
the road to racing, and dramatic criticisms under the
signature " Stalled Ox." He distilled the spirit of
camaraderie at Romano's, imbibing some more at
Curzon Street, where he gathered around him all the
brightest wits of the gay Press and the gayer boards.
There were pretty ladies of high and low degree, fine
gentlemen with fine mortgages, famous heroes of the
oar, trainers and distrainers, lords and their honourable
brothers, and dramatists with and without poetry to
their equipment, to provide a small romantic leaven.
James's wife received them all with an equal geniality.
The passports to these wonderful parties were beauty
and humour. Without these you were not welcome
nor indeed appropriate. Reginald Shirley Brooks,
possessed of both, profiting little by either, was always
in evidence with many more connected with John
Corlett, Newnham Davies the prize epicure, and
Goldberg, known as "the Shifter," and Pottinger
Stephens.
Labouchere, Arthur Anderson and his brother
Percy, who later illustrated my most inadequate book
on Costume, Cecil Raleigh, Herman Vezin, Ernest
Wells (Swears), with oddments of different reputa-
tions all crowd upon my mind, pervaded with hilarity,
good fellowship, good wine and good jokes not streaked
with blue or mauve, but allied to an exchange of con-
fidences; the popular fable of the shilling-in-the-
pocket millionaire competing for credulity with tales
of the play or book achieved in a single night.
The youth and inexperience of Julia and myself
1 8 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
rendered us outside the pale, but we were permitted
to intrude sometimes with strict injunctions to leave
at eleven, when the more violent delights of the
assembly might create in us a false conception of its
artistic purpose.
I remember being there one night, on sufferance as
usual, and more or less ill at ease through my inability
to contribute anything towards the entertainment. I
was wondering whether it would not be better to go
home supperless, when my attention was caught and
held by a tall figure standing aloof with pallid face,
red hair falling lankly over a high forehead, and man's
eternal interrogatory in his light blue eyes.
Whence had he come to this banquet of careless
wits ? I pondered as I glanced at him inquisitively,
and questioned James to a rapid explanation.
" Oh, that is George Moore, an Irishman from
Paris."
It was daring in those days, even improper for any
but the indigenous to live in Paris.
" Rather a swell out there," James continued whilst
he looked across at him affectionately. " He matters
with the Art and Literature lot, haunts cafes, is a boon
companion of Manet, thinks a deal of Zola and is pals
with de Goncourt, liable at any moment to talk about
him or even about Victor Hugo. I don't think he has
written much himself, but he will."
It was obvious that George Moore's silence was not
due to dullness and that he would have little wish to
speak to me, and I wanted so badly to speak to someone.
Cecil Raleigh, hovering in my neighbourhood,
appeared likely to be a more suitable objective, and I
had known him in the early days of Pan, so I ventured,
ABOUT MY GIRLHOOD 19
rudely enough, to express to him my distaste for mixed
company and my cherished conviction that the universe
had been created for the better classes of fastidious
prejudice.
He upturned the ends of his fat moustache de-
fiantly, and tucking his thin cigarette to the uttermost
corner of his mouth, sniffed his characteristic sniff, and
patting my shoulder in the paternal tense, ordered —
" Don't be a fool, my girl, Socialism is the religion
of the future."
Many times I have heard my father say as he passed
James's hat upon the hall table, " The head of a size
to fit that, can have no brains. " But he was wrong,
James was a very clever man with just a human weak-
ness or so to mar a triumphant career.
He would admit candidly that money was his great
stumbling-block ; he could never manage money.
Possessed of an erratic temperament and considerable
generosity, no matter how much he earned, he declared
he had never been out of debt " since he left school
owing as. 9d. to the sweet shop."
I am convinced someone else had the sweets, for
someone else was for ever eating all James's sweets.
He adventured on many fields — legal, political,
sporting, literary and theatrical, but he always came
to the same uncomfortable conclusion that he had not
enough money, and he never suspected this state to be
due to his super-liberality. As a lawyer he gave advice
freely to his friends ; as a racehorse owner he indulged
his prodigal proclivities in the world of hangers-on ;
during his editorial and play-writing epochs he was
lavish in his hospitality and in his benevolence towards
his comrades, while his search for " copy " through the
ao MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
door of conviviality led him inevitably down Carey
Street way.
He declared there was too much civilisation in
England for any but millionaires, and he voiced his
belief that he " had enjoyed every experience except
death and solvency."
I, who loved him, know that he fell quite unwillingly
into bankruptcy, although when passing through the
attendant vexations he reported with characteristic
irreverence —
" Now I know that my Receiver liveth."
My mother, arousing herself from her misery to
console his depressed moments, would shroud his
weakness beneath her unfailing love, and would even
prove her unfaltering belief in him by making efforts
to go to the rehearsals of his plays where she would
listen with all credulity to his confidence in the fine
characters of his heroines when off the stage.
She was very modern, that brave mother of ours,
and broad-minded beyond her period. She would
smile confidently at James's declarations of Miss X's
complete excellence.
:< She's so good, mother," he would emphasise
when there was no doubt whatever as to the standard of
attained virtue. More accurately James adjudged this
when he wrote later as a curtain line which never failed
to secure the laugh of its intention, " How good, bad
women are !
I chuckle in remembrance of another subtle jest of
his when a clumsy Blanche was on the terpsichorean
track :
" Let us come and hear her dance," he would
say.
MY BROTHER, JAMES DAVIS (OWEN HALL)
T-o face page 20
ABOUT MY GIRLHOOD 21
Another bon mot worth the record :
" James," asked a beauty with an eye to business,
" I want my portrait painted ; which artist would do
me justice ? "
He replied promptly with a conciliatory grin,
" Louis Wain is the right man, nobody better, my
dear."
Growing to some scepticism of the disinterestedness
of the darlings of the gods, he would describe an
actress as " a girl who stands on the same board every
evening thinking spitefully of the manager who pays
her salary."
James was responsible for some attempts to uplift
the form and dialogue of musical comedy.
The Gaiety Girl was the first of his series of recog-
nised successes which proceeded to include The
Artist's Model, The Greek Slave, The Geisha, Floradora,
The Girl from Kay's and half a dozen others, with Ser-
geant Brue, which had the advantage of music by Liza
Lehmann, a gifted artist who hangs on the line in my
gallery of splendid women.
I sent James a new novel once with the query,
:< Don't you think this would make a play ? J!
" I am sure it would, and a damned dull one," he
made answer.
He was not " a little too witty," but witty enough
to render his companionship supremely desirable. I
obtained it gleefully for a short visit to Eastbourne,
when, after running to catch the train, I flung myself
panting into a corner of the carriage to gasp :
" You can write the paragraph which shall announce,
* She was found dead with twopence in bronze in her
pocket/ "
22 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
" Wouldn't be true," he laughed ; " I should have
taken the twopence."
" Life's a jest,
And all things show it.
I thought so once,
And now I know it."
are lines upon Gay's monument in Westminster Abbey.
James was pursued by jokes even to the grave, where
on the day of his funeral amongst the piled-up flowers
was a large open book of violets with snowdrops —
writing, " Alas ! poor Yorick."
" I never knew his name was Yorick, " said a loving
chorus girl as she stooped to read this.
James died over-young, leaving to the merrymakers
a legacy of quips generally quoted without inverted
commas.
It is many years ago, but to me there is an abiding
sense of the loss of him ; he was a dear fellow possessed
of an inexhaustible store of chivalrous affection for
women, and his mother stood to him for ever as the
best of these.
Our poor mother ! She would say that she wished
she had never had us taught to write, the desire being
inspired as much by James's tendency towards libel,
as by my sister Julia's publication of Dr. Phillips,
which fluttered the dovecotes of Maida Vale, rattled
the skeletons in the cupboards and the stout ladies at
the card -tables, but never merited the popular sus-
picion that the hero was taken from life.
Many uneventful gaieties of our sheltered girlhood
had come and gone when at a party given in the
neighbourhood there shone a most delightful vision, a
ABOUT MY GIRLHOOD 23
slim young girl with chestnut hair enwrapped in a
scarlet silken cap, with bright brown eyes deep-set
with that pathetic appeal which never fails to find
answer in the heart of man.
That little girl was Mary Moore, now to be recog-
nised as Lady Wyndham, widow of Sir Charles Wynd-
ham, the finest comedian who has stepped upon the
stage in my time, to intone the whole scale of love-
making with the varied notes inflected by a convincing
sincerity which brooked no denial.
On that first occasion of our meeting Mary Moore
was asked to sing, and sang a comic song entitled
" Did you ever see an oyster walk upstairs? " How
Mary Moore has followed the example of that ascend-
ing bivalve and walked upstairs to the top ; how she
went on the stage and through the introduction of his
sister Mrs. Bronson Howard was brought to Charles
Wyndham, ultimately becoming his leading lady
and business partner after many trials and troubles
bravely endured, is an oft-told tale, though few tell it
accurately.
" As if anybody knew the whole truth about any-
thing," but so far as regards Mary Moore I may be
written down as an exception to this rule of the un-
informed informer because she and I have been firm
friends and close neighbours the greater part of our
lives.
When she was about sixteen she married James
Albery, doubtless impelled by an appreciation of his
superior intelligence and education. I came across
them together one Christmas Eve when we sat round
the fireside of a mutual friend, and she gazed at him
with gleaming, worshipping eyes, whilst he told won-
24 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
derful ghost stories of his imaginative weaving, and
right well he told them too ! With admiration I have
seen Mary Moore bring up to successful manhood
the three clever sons of James Albery, working indus-
triously and always more industriously to improve
herself in the art of acting, to capture astutely the best
principles of theatrical management, to gauge the public
taste, to realise the righteous ways to promote her own
aims and the good of a profession which now holds
her gratefully as the President of its Benevolent
Association.
That little brown-eyed girl with no fortune save her
artless charm has not attained easily to her present
position, and no one who has not enjoyed an intimacy
with her can appreciate how much in toil and tears
she has paid for it, nor understand with what unselfish-
ness she gave herself up to shield Sir Charles Wyndham
from harm or unhappiness during his last days when
he fell to incapability on the saddest side of that dread
disease, aphasia.
But in the long years I have happy recollections
of them both, and I was often their guest at supper
parties in the famous yacht room with portholes set
low round the walls, and at Hyde Park Hotel, where
Wyndham held tremendous receptions of the exalted
in the world of society which adored him.
Further proof of Sir Charles Wyndham 's good-will
towards me came when I was asked to write some
press paragraphs for him, and he, while paying me
an excellent salary for my work, steadfastly avoided
any opportunity to give me the material for its con-
struction. He turned any business meeting with me
into the more congenial channel of mere gossip on
ABOUT MY GIRLHOOD 25
lighter things, with a tea accompaniment. However, I
was very pleased to be invited to endeavour to exhila-
rate by my fun a dull scene in a comedy he hoped to
present. In consultation over this we spent two hours
whilst he taught me the necessity for the short sentence
in stage dialogue ; but he decided against the work
altogether, and sent me £50 for his lesson. It was
inevitable that I should try to write a play, and
Wyndham with Mary Moore approved a one-scene
effort, The Runaways, which, however, illness pre-
vented them from acting, but in the cause of some
charity Sydney Brough and Gertrude Kingston came
to the rescue of my dashed hopes, and I like to record
how much I found the dramatist can owe to the
actors. Every little jest I had made was magnified by
their art into some importance. I had delivered duds
and they were transformed into human beings, while
their " business," omitted through my ignorance from
the scrip, invested the scene with a lively reality to
create laughter throughout and to lead to many de-
mands for more presentations, uniformly gratis !
Gertrude Kingston was the first woman in London
to build a theatre for herself. It was under her
direction that The Little Theatre which was to com-
bine the advantages of the small hall with those of the
playhouse was erected. But it proved one of the in-
stances when fortune did not favour the brave and the
fair, and many vicissitudes have since shown that
Gertrude Kingston had set herself an impracticable
task. Rather an amusing incident during the early
days of my friendship with Gertrude Kingston led to
my introduction to her husband, a very handsome
fellow, Captain Silver,
26 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
On the first night of The Manoeuvres of Jane I felt a
hand tightly grasping my knee, and I heard an em-
phasised " Darling " in my ear.
" Unhand me, sir, and how dare you ! " being the
conventional acceptance of such conduct, I did not
offer it, but stared at the offender who was quick to
repentance.
" I beg your pardon, but she has just come on the
stage. Gertrude Kingston is my wife, and I was
thinking aloud about her ; do forgive me."
" Suit the action to the word and the word to the
action," I laughed in recognising his complete in-
genuousness, and we chatted amicably through the
entr'acte.
Charles Wyndham wrote in my autograph book,
" A good woman is an understudy for an angel," and
he forgave me my thanks underlined with " Do you
call her often for rehearsal."
CHAPTER III
ABOUT MY MARRIAGE AND ADVENTURE INTO
JOURNALISM
MY first meeting with Mary Moore is
amongst my vivid memories before Julia
and I married. Julia was fortunate in
securing for her husband Arthur Frankau, the ideal
gentleman, whose unchangeable love, trust and
devotion were proved in their last testimony, " To my
beloved wife Julia I leave everything I die possessing."
My own marriage, brought about by my desolation
at Julia's, was not what even my exaggerated optimism
can write down a success.
I have always had the desire to spend money ;
luxuries, superfluous to the apostles of simplicity, were,
and I may add, are to me the absolute necessities of
existence.
I do not want to wait until May for my strawberries,
and I cannot read or write in a room that has not
the right carpets, furniture and pictures surrounded
by flowers.
I must be well dressed, imitation lace on my under-
clothes makes me unhappy, and when my silken petti-
coats are not Milanese, and my stockings and shoes
not of the highest birth, I feel a sense of personal
unworthiness that disturbs my outlook.
27
28 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Being uncomfortable myself, I become irritable
and unjust towards others, no longer amiable, tolerant
and courteous, but anarchical, suspicious and ill-
mannered.
Such being my mental calibre, and circumstances
after my marriage having been propitious, it may easily
be understood I did not accept with equanimity the
news that my husband's business matters were seriously
involved and our means reduced practically to a minus
quantity.
Then I thought myself injured. Now I know I was
only selfish. Certainly I felt nothing in David
Aria's life so well became him as his leaving me
for South Africa five years after I had driven with
him from the Synagogue to hear his first rapture
expressed in, " I wonder what has won the Lincoln
Handicap. " My David danced and gambled before
the Ark.
We spent our honeymoon at Shanklin, where he read
and re-read the morning papers to their final advertise-
ment, and then watched for the evening papers to
obtain news of the latest prices. I was very bored,
longing to return to Julia and my mother, to put my
house in order and to finish sewing some Arabian
curtains I destined for the portiere. Graves in the
Isle of Wight running over with forget-me-nots haunt
me as symbols of much that was and more that
followed.
Had I been older or of more serious thought I could
perhaps have guided my husband into some harbour
of safety, but I always ignored wilfully any hint of
trouble, and we were only boy and girl together with
little of real love between us. His main attraction for
ABOUT MY MARRIAGE 29
me had been his dark Southern eyes, his gentle voice,
his slenderness and his cheerfulness ; mine for him
doubtless was no better based.
I soon found him slender in many ways, in intellect
and in integrity, and even had I been wiser nothing
that I might have urged could have upset his fatal
belief that he knew which horse would come in first,
whilst he was confirmed in an immovable faith in the
protected sparrow fable, a faith which led him so
often and so hopefully to take our goods to the
pawnbroker.
" Who put it in ?
Little Tommy Green.
Who took it out ?
Little Billie Stout."
But alas ! my husband never played the part of little
Billie Stout, yet I would admit that he was quite amiable
and invariably sober, I would ignore his fitful fidelity
with his careless calculations, I would chronicle his
joyous disposition, his kindness and his dexterity in
filling a hot-water bottle.
When disaster came his idea was — I must in fairness
grant him an idea — that we should sell the house and
its contents and live in apartments whilst he looked for
another opening for his talents.
I knew what that meant, for I had a cousin who had
been looking for an opening for twenty years and living
upon the family all the time, the family making an
allowance as small as it could, and always threatening
to reduce this when a chef gave notice or a tailor sent in
a bill. I knew the difficulties which beset a man
once off the line ; that he has failed in his own
business no matter for what cause is no recom-
3o MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
mendation to him when he wants to manage someone
else's.
I insisted that a temporary separation would give me
a better chance of re-establishing us together. I am
glad to remember that neither of us upbraided the
other, but held discussions with absolute good humour
upon the date of the division which took place a few
weeks later when, with many demands for his early
return and several embraces, I saw him off to the Cape,
and came back to my flat to find it in occupation of a
seedy apologetic individual demanding £29 I2s. with
an alternative suggestion of a prolonged residence
writh me.
I was alert to the novel experience of such an ac-
quaintance, becoming at once the pleasant hostess with
an offer of whisky and soda.
" I don't want to be in your way," he deprecated,
" because I was boot boy where your husband went to
school, and he was such a nice fellow, always ready
with his shilling ; I wish you would just settle this
account and let me go."
I buckled on my brass-plated armour of bravado.
" Certainly not, and you can have no right here, the
contents of these rooms are mine."
" You must prove that, mum."
;< I will telegraph to my lawyer."
He grew kinder and kinder and more confidential
as I poured out a second and a third whisky, and
urged him to a seat and a cigarette.
" I shouldn't send no wires," he advised, " there
ain't no good in letting the post office people know
about your affairs, you can go and see your lawyer
and I'll sit quiet in the kitchen till you come back."
ABOUT MY MARRIAGE 31
Splendid specimen of a man in possession, where,
however, he was not permitted to remain. My
horrified mother, shocked at the outrage, fetched the
experienced James who boasted an intimacy with
every bailiff in the metropolis.
" Ike, you scoundrel, how dare you annoy my sister/'
and the ever-ready purse ignoring the just bill and all
against the law promptly produced a sovereign to
deport a grateful invader.
My story got round, as such stories will, and dear
conventional relations came to condole with me in my
sad unprotected position with a little girl to keep,
doubtless suspecting me of heartlessness when I smiled
the reassurance that I could look after both of us.
Every woman can look after herself until she likes the
man who likes her.
My friends arrived in mournful numbers, miscalcu-
lated to my deliberate attitude of a full comprehension
of my husband's schemes, even of my approval of
these and my confidence of his reappearance with a
fortune.
I refused to be the pathetic object for commiseration.
I would not become the fashionable form of philan-
thropy. I was cheaper than a fancy bazaar, and more
amusing than a charity concert. I protested I should
enjoy my freedom and profit by it. I anticipated with
satisfaction an opportunity to cast off the burden of
debts deep-hedged in falsehood which had threatened
to make a happy existence impossible.
" Amuse me, praise me, help me, but do not pity
me," I felt as I spoke with no rancour towards circum-
stances which had sent my best household gods to
dwell beneath the gleam of three balls, and I was sure
32 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
that no man's hand was against me and that my wil-
derness would blossom with opportunities. I might
be a Tea Association ? I might keep a bonnet shop ?
I might become a manicurist ? a saleswoman ? or a
typist ? But as it happened I followed none of these
courses, going swiftly along the road indicated by
the sign-post " To writing/' I was happy enough
in my confidence to find some means to live, although
often when noting the labours of others I had declared
I could never earn sixpence. I have been able to earn
many sixpences, but the first were due to a misdirected
letter intended for my sister Julia already guiding her
pen to profit.
"DEAR MADAM,
We shall be very glad to hear from you as to
your willingness to contribute weekly to the new
journal, Jewish Society.
Yours faithfully,
THE MANAGER."
The error was hailed as from Providence, but I
bucked shyly at the start, so Julia to prod me wrote
the first article and shamed me to effort when the
cheque reached me. A couple of weeks later I was
filling the allotted columns to the satisfaction of a not
too exacting editor, whose low standard no doubt
cost him and his supporters a thousand pounds
or so.
I wrote to my husband regularly for six years ; his
rare replies assured me of his content, of his belief in
better things to come and the unsatisfactory condition
of the weather. My last communication was returned
ABOUT MY MARRIAGE 33
marked "gone away," and I do not recall that I ever gave
him another serious thought until sixteen years later
when, as plaintiff, I stood up in the Divorce Court to
identify his photograph whilst marvelling that I could
ever have imagined I cared for him. How foolish was
the judge who, after considering my case with the
information that my delay in instituting it had occurred
through a regard for the welfare of my only daughter
just married, awarded me release " with the custody
of the child."
To chance I owed my further literary advance under
the aegis of Julia, who had been summoned to the
office of The Gentlewoman to discuss a series of articles
on " Medicos under the Microscope."
Whilst she was arguing with J. S. Wood, the editor,
about the best victims for her purpose, A. J. Warden,
the business manager, no doubt appreciating the cut
of my coat and the angle of my hat, interrogated,
" Don't you know anything to write about ? "
I hazarded pertly " Dress and drama with drivel
sauce," and I was engaged at once to serve these,
remaining on the staff of The Gentlewoman for a long
time, whilst Willie Wilde acted as stand-by to deliver
prose or poem immediately to order, and Malcolm
Salaman contributed his kindly views of " Woman
under a Man's Eyeglass." Julia duly discoursed on
Doctors and Children, Mrs. J. E. Panton threw some
new light into the darkest domestic basements, and a
lady of swarthy complexion advised on the best use
of cosmetics under a pen-name of Venus de Milo,
her large dark eyes, bad manners and drawling accent
suggesting Venus of Mile End as a more suitable
signature.
34 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
I confess audaciously that my first contributions
were written entirely by Malcolm Salaman, who is now
the best recognised expert on all the graphic arts in
all their states.
He was an untiring friend to me, and I was ever
a glad taker of service. He was so anxious to show
his sympathy with my poor circumstances that to
improve these he not alone learnt to spell passementerie
but to report its beaded proceedings in persuasive
paragraphs. With his help I got along fairly well
towards my main goal of a decent salary, A. J. Warden
educating me on the commercial side of newspapers,
and the value of a personal visit to lead via the
attractive notice qf the salesman's wares to revenue
for the advertisement department.
J. S. Wood and I never became friends, and he
would close an eye and cock his head slightly on one
side when I protested that he did not like me, while
he admitted :
" I am always impressed by the idea that whatever
you are doing and you do very well you are getting the
best of us." But before I left J. S. Wood I had learnt
to realise the justice of his reputation as " a capital
man at the turnstile." He was indeed the ideal keeper
at the gate which opens to the field of philanthropy,
and no one worked harder than he for the extension
of the Irish industries, and it is to his indefatigable
energies we owe the Children's salon which has
endowed many cots in many hospitals. When our
connection was severed he gave me a written certificate
of merit, but he omitted the tributary tray which was
so blatantly my due.
I worked very hard supplying as many as twelve
ABOUT MY MARRIAGE 35
thousand words a week and travelling round the town
to collect details for these. I believe that my friendly
irrelevant methods of interviewing buyers and managers
did something to revolutionise what was known as
Dress and Shop Journalism.
Once I ventured to deliver a lecture to other writers
on fashion with a financial end. I insisted upon the
importance of these approaching with respect, if at all,
the subject of dress. I urged them to recognise that
they must serve God and Mammon, the editor and the
advertiser. I entreated a consideration for the laws of
syntax, recommending some study of Debrett in case
efficiency and presentable clothes should land them
at court in Society to some misplacement of titles.
Finally I hoped that their language and their in-
formation might be accepted alike by the lenient
grammarian, the ambitious milliner and the imposing
Chamberlain, perorating proudly with " Render unto
Caesar that which is Caesar's and let Caesar's wife be
above suspicion of velveteen if she is wearing velvet."
After such a tour de force I acquired the arbitrary
attitude, and, rebelling against any restrictions, ac-
cepted an invitation to edit the fashion pages of Hearth
and Home.
While thus employed under the roof of Messrs.
Beeton & Co. in Fetter Lane I first came across
Arnold Bennett. We jostled each other in the doorway
of his passage to the editorial chair in the office of
Woman, a successful penny weekly dispensing much
instruction in the arts of beauty, conduct and cooking,
with little sops to the taste of the multitude in short
stories of avowed fiction and shorter anecdotes of
avowed facts.
36 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Arnold Bennett's personality struck me at once ;
although of nervous, fidgety movements, twisting
his watch-chain and tossing back an errant lock
of thick dark hair, he was a solid figure impressively
slow of speech, yet of an arresting power in each
utterance.
I should say as I think of him, that forceful concen-
tration was his prevailing characteristic, although his
fine brown eyes held other significance, and his job
was to edit Woman.
He tells me now that he asked me to contribute to
his paper and that I haggled over his price. I don't
believe a word of this accusation, for I never men-
tioned money, and I am sure I should have jumped
at the chance of working for him. I know I should
have found him, as someone wrote of someone else,
" upright in his praise, downright in his blame and
all right in his methods/' A struggler on the far
outskirts of the literary way could not have failed to
push forwards with Arnold Bennett's encouragement
to guide her.
Except that the thick dark locks are crested with
silver, I thought him little changed when recently
I greeted him in his spacious flat at Hanover Square,
where many wide rooms come to typical conclusion in
the atmosphere of The Old Wives' Tale, accurately
registered on chiffonier, horsehair-seated chairs, lustre
ornaments and repp curtains. I believe Arnold Bennett
grows younger and younger, and it is good to hear
account of him as expert yachtsman and to know " he
is first in the ballroom and last to leave it, and he
dances supremely well."
He would, he always does everything supremely
ABOUT MY MARRIAGE 37
well, even the generous giving of his excellent photo-
graph I craved for my later pages.
Whilst I was working for Hearth and Home I con-
ceived the notion that I must possess and edit a journal
of my own. Thus came into existence the monthly
magazine known as The World of Dress, destined of
course to show all other editors how fashion papers
should be conducted.
Rabid reformer I thought myself, and fell as rabid
reformers will, to pursue the very policy I uprose to
condemn.
A friendly syndicate was mustered, and much
pecuniary assistance came from Harry H. Marks, who
was then a potential figure in finance with a fancy for
starting newspapers. When he promised to support
mine, he made the strict proviso that he was not
to be mentioned in connection with it, that he
would have no shares and no thanks. He protested
cynically that perhaps I should never speak ill of him
and that this restraint should be his reward. He
was an odd fellow, brilliantly clever, with a deter-
mination to fight everybody and win everything ;
anxious to be misunderstood and attaining fully this
ambition. In his last years a long illness left him
at the mercy of many enemies he had benefited,
but none could ever deny his courage nor his
eloquence, and his death found him gaily betting
upon its date.
The World of Dress possessed many excellent features
from many excellent sources. Fashion news from
Paris, Vienna and New York, interviews about
dress with famous people. Sir James Linton,
Sydney Grundy, Max Pemberton, Mortimer Menpes,
38 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Downey, the royal photographer, and lastly and most
amusingly Dan Leno gave opinions. Casually Dan
Leno declared that he of all men best understood
women's clothes — because he had worn them for
years ; and he knew all about them from the inside ;
the property to secure more laughter for him than
anything else in his mirthful career being an old wired
bonnet, tapped on and tied with strings. Every time
it came off he just tapped it on a different part of his
head, and the audience roared.
Costume was an integral part of his songs, and he
haunted old clothes shops till he found the exact
things he wanted, for they must be real to get the
actuality as he saw it.
A constant contributor to The World of Dress was
Mrs. Barry Pain, the most humorous woman I ever
knew, and she illuminated with originality as well
as wit many occurrences on the clothes-line.
Her comic answers to correspondents included three
that are unforgettable :
Mignonette. — On no account have it out ; bandage
carefully with raw alpaca and eat only brown bread
and seccotine.
Minerva. — You send no name, no address and no
questions, but I hope this will find you and tell you
all you want to know.
Madrigal. — Never take the foot into considera-
tion. Take threes in boots, twos in shoes and plenty
of cabs.
But alas ! The World of Dress followed the fate of
all journals conducted by the amateur, and I took its
THE COVER OF THE WORLD OF DRESS
SPECIALLY DESIGNED BY WM. NICHOLSON.
To face page 38
ABOUT MY MARRIAGE 39
troubles to Arthur Pearson, who managed it and
financed it liberally without much personal concern
in it. Arthur Pearson was rather difficult of approach ;
he was quite the busiest man I have ever known, five
minutes were the extent of any interview granted to
me, and during these he would watch the door for the
next comer and answer the telephone to a below-
stairs clerk, instructed perhaps in the value of an
interrupting bell.
CHAPTER IV
MORE ABOUT MYSELF AS A JOURNALIST
" Live, love and laugh, be ever this your motto
To make life lovely as a dream of Watteau ;
Though art and nature coax your pleasant hours
With pictured beauty, books and joy of flowers,
Let still your dearest culture be the grace
That makes your heart your old friends' homing-place."
HOW vain of me to print this New Year's
greeting written to me by Malcolm Salaman,
but I grow more and more grateful while I
think how years ago he laboured to promote my profit
and my amusement.
Wherever I wandered as editor or contributor
I had his comradeship, and he led me through
that world of art and letters, and up to the firmament
of theatrical stars, where I had always wished to
dwell.
He had little difficulty in his pioneering, for his
father's house was amongst the most popular meeting-
places for the elect.
Charles Salaman, for many decades a prominent
figure in the musical life of London, is best known now
as the composer of many beautiful anthems and the
famous song he made of Shelley's " I arise from dreams
of Thee." Unabashed I admit that I never returned
to him his copy of this poem with marginal notes in
40
ABOUT MYSELF AS A JOURNALIST 41
his own handwriting. I hold it amongst my treasures,
together with a birthday letter which declares that
although he did not learn the date from a biographical
dictionary, I must accept affection with his good
wishes, and he added, " I specially congratulate myself
upon being spared in my old age to write you these
few lines. "
He smiled his welcome upon me on many occasions
when he would sit at his piano and assure me that he
" existed on kindness and cocoa," while he deplored
my want of understanding of his art. Around him
would gather in worship many of the younger genera-
tion. I recollect as one of his special favourites Evelyn
Millard, a tall and lovely dark-eyed girl wearing white
muslin and a pink rose, and reciting with that excellent
diction she had learnt from her father, who was
professor of elocution at the Royal Academy of
Music.
Brandon Thomas was another accepted friend, and
what a handsome Brandon Thomas he was ! Of extra-
ordinary vivacity and an infectious enthusiasm for the
actors and playwright's art, for Whistler's painting,
for the Artists' Rifle Volunteers, and showing always an
amiable readiness to sing to his own accompaniment
" The fine old Irish gentleman."
Under the auspices of Malcolm Salaman I found
Luther Munday whilst he was piloting Lord Londes-
borough through the chairmanship of the old Lyric
Club, which dispensed much hospitality amid the
merry circumstance.
Such cheery times we used to have with Lord and
Lady Londesborough presiding over many prominent
representatives of the art circles. They would respond
42 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
gladly to the call of a specially chartered steamer from
Westminster Bridge to witness the Oxford and Cam-
bridge boat-race from the Club House at Barnes, with
a Guards band discoursing music all the way, and the
Club servants dispensing an even more exhilarating
accompaniment .
Lord Londesborough's devotion to the turf and the
stage would of course suggest an equally festive enjoy-
ment of the Royal Cup day at Ascot from the top of a
coach or an omnibus which would be crowded with
celebrities, all with very special information from
special sources. I believe the Club luncheons at
Ascot were initiated by the Lyric Club ; anyhow
my social experiences under its genial influence, aided
and abetted by Luther Munday, are written down
amongst my joyful memories not entirely unin-
structive.
To Malcolm Salaman also I owe my acquaintance
with Arthur Pinero which was inaugurated at a private
view at the Royal Academy. I often went to Pinero 's
parties, where his wife played hostess to everyone who
mattered in society, art, literature and the drama. It
was at his house I first saw Ellen Terry off the
stage, and met Richard le Gallienne, enjoying much
converse with him, for he had been reading some
trivial article of mine in the Daily Chronicle, and my
ready vanity was flattered when he dropped into
poetry.
On this occasion perhaps he did not " build the lofty
rhyme/' but when a poet wants to have tea with you
his merest lilt is apt to sound lyrical. The incident was
so long ago I don't believe I recall the lines correctly,
but their purport is all right, and I am sure that when I
ABOUT MYSELF AS A JOURNALIST 43
received them at greater length they were perfect in
their conduct.
" Mrs. Aria writes
Every day I see.
Would that she would write
Sometimes unto me :
If only once a year
Just a little card
Asking me to tea."
Several little cards, all eloquent of my appreciation,
were despatched,' and when Richard le Gallienne would
come to see me I was disappointed if I could glimpse
no manuscript emerging from his coat pocket.
He read to me the lecture he gave at the O.P. Club
on the simplicities of those who patronised the Empire
Theatre, which Mrs. Ormiston Chant was endeavour-
ing to rescue from its peripatetic customers. Whether
le Gallienne was the apostle of purity or of the liberty
of the subject I cannot recollect, but he was an excellent
orator with the chin of Shelley, and he moved it to
some fascination, so that rapidly I was installed
amongst his eager readers, and was enchanted when I
received a copy of his Book Bills of Narcissus , inscribed
to " A daughter of Eve with open admiration. "
I had become a free lance in the newspapers, con-
tributing irregularly to half a dozen, and weekly to
Black and White, " The Diary of a Daughter of Eve,"
which brought me much entertainment whatsoever
king might reign. C. N. Williamson, ever kindly, was
the first to accept my work, and his example was
followed by Oswald Crawfurd, who was so splendid
a creature to look upon that some envious observer
described him as a whole procession in himself. He
44 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
looked, indeed, like some fine Portuguese pirate, an
all-conquering hero well armed to the task of snatching
possessions and pleasure.
He showed me much courtesy, and it was at his flat
in Queen Anne's Mansions that I first met Violet Hunt,
laurel leaves already blooming in her bright hair,
pretty with deep-set purple eyes, sprightly and eager
for experience. Here, too, I received cordial and
prized attention from Mrs. Lynn Linton, whose in-
terest in me and my work added to my considerable
conceit.
How vividly she comes back to me with her large
piercing black eyes behind highly polished glasses and
her grey hair surmounted by a cap with a lace
bow.
I shared two pleasures and one misfortune with
Mrs. Lynn Linton ; we both adored dress and needle-
work, whilst we suffered alike from the name of Eliza.
On that evening when she patted my shoulder and
asked where I lived and expressed approval of my
articles, I was tongue-tied and awkward, though not
blind to her splendid bearing, to her well-made black
satin dress with its white satin waistcoat overlaid with
black lace and jet, or to her beringed hands and the
note of authority in her voice. By me she was respected
as headmistress of my craft, and whilst I listened to
her she told — how strange it seems now to record it ! —
that she was the first woman to obtain a fixed salary
on a daily newspaper — I believe it was the Morning
Chronicle — and that her brother being shocked at such
proceeding as her evening visit to produce and correct
her column, would accompany her to the office and
remain there until she was free to be escorted home.
ABOUT MYSELF AS A JOURNALIST 45
The traditions of John Cook, editor, seem to give
little occasion for such anxiety, and although there are
records of quarrels between them, these could not have
been very serious, for it was under his editorship of
The Saturday Review that Mrs. Lynn Linton pilloried
The Girl of the Period, denouncing and trouncing her
with a scathing persistence which brought a horde
of wild women and tame men shrieking round her
desk.
One afternoon I was as gladly and badly as usual
writing at my table in my exalted flat in Maida Vale
when I found Mrs. Linton at my elbow bonneted,
cloaked and beaming with benevolence. My servant
had not announced her clearly, if at all, so that a
second or two passed before I could recollect the
name of my obviously distinguished visitor, whom
I rose to welcome with delight.
" You are surprised to see me, but I have been think-
ing of you so much, and I hear that your husband
is in South Africa ; my dear/' she concluded im-
pressively, " don't make his return impossible ; you
are young, you are attractive, and you are in the thick
of it, be sure you take to yourself no man friend, and
be sure that you," she repeated it, "do not make it
impossible for your husband to come back to you."
I reassured the dear old lady that my mother was
living with me, that no stricter duenna could be
imagined, and that I was really quite safe by myself.
She appeared much relieved by this news of my
mother, while she hinted to me of her own sad ex-
periences which she trusted I would escape. She was
immensely kind ; what a dull idiot I was not to tax
that kindness by drawing upon her personal knowledge
46 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
of Walter Savage Landor, Carlyle, Charles Voysey,
Coventry Patmore, Dickens, Thackeray and Ruskin,
while I might also have gleaned her real opinion of
Mary Evans who became George Eliot.
She stayed with me only a very few moments, but
begged me to go and see her on Saturdays, when I
knew she held a court of great contemporaries and
smiled upon all young seekers after fame. Many years
later I did hazard a proposition to interview her, and
I felt so guilty of my tactlessness, when she wrote to
me from Malvern, where she had gone to rest from
her strenuous town labours.
* What have I ever done to you in this life or a former
that you should want to open the door of a mental
torture chamber ? You should realise, for you have
imagination, all that goes to my memory " are just a few
words I venture to extract from that letter which
ended " don't think me an unmitigated wretch, but
give me an inch of your charity. "
I gave her a mile of my repentance at having dared
to disturb her badly wanted peace.
The fortune of the gregarious is as the fortune of
the snowball, and the collection of acquaintances
increases naturally as entertainments are given and
taken.
" So pleased to have met you, and I hope you will
come and see me ! " the proposal materialises at a
luncheon or a tea, and there is another added to the
list who may forward a bunch of pink roses or a cross
of chrysanthemums as gay or grave occasion may
demand. There may be a falling from worship of
men, of babies or of Pekingese, but all women agree
in adoring flowers. I have ever been more or less of
ABOUT MYSELF AS A JOURNALIST 47
a floral depot, inclining most affectionately towards
white lilac, a widely known fact which was wont to
induce an inquisitive to greet these flowers on my table
with " Who is in the white lilac stage now ? "
It was to Mrs. Lynn Linton's Saturday At Homes
I owed my first introduction to Madame Novikoff,
whose advent into the political world had evoked
varied comment.
Madame Novikoff had much endowment for her
work of reconciling the interests of old Imperial Russia
with those of advancing Liberal England, where W. E.
Gladstone was Prime Minister to her encouragement ;
and her pen, her personality and her knowledge secured
for her many detractors and the triumph of the dislike
of Lord Beaconsfield, who nicknamed her M.P. for
Russia.
But history and memoirs record her indefatigable
labours, her interest in the education and the im-
proved condition of her people, her successes, her
failures, the protests of her partisans and the accusa-
tions of her slanderers. If you turn over the pages of
The Pall Mall Gazette and other publications you can
read under the signature of O.K. her strenuous argu-
ments, her reasonable and unreasonable contentions,
and you will appreciate her tenacity of purpose while
you can glimpse into the deeps of her desires and marvel
at the heights of her achievement. She came of a
fighting family and was a brave soldier in the battle,
her pen was her sword dipped in diplomacy, and she
was not reluctant to apply vehemence if necessary to
press her point.
Madame Novikoff is the only Russian lady I have
ever known, though some have acted to my enlighten-
48 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
ment and others have danced into my speculations.
We became neighbours long after I first had sight of
her at Mrs. Lynn Linton's, where the crowd pressing
forward to see her prevented any but a very short
audience.
Her sought-after entertainments impeded the traffic
from the park railings to a quarter of the way down
Harley Street. Here was a polyglot mingling of many
classes from many countries. Madame was more
tolerant at home than on paper, and she spoke fluently
in four languages. Statesmen and nobles invaded her
along with the painters, players, musicians, propa-
gandists and priests. She had insight into the needs
of them all, while she was ultra-keen to succour the
cast down, and her knowledge of the best method to
do this was no less profound than her desire to
exercise it.
Notwithstanding her generosity in word and deed,
there was always an atmosphere of dignity, even of
austerity in her surroundings, and some ceremonious-
ness, unusual in private houses in England, served to
enhance this effect.
In the lobby of her hall you would write your
name in a book, and entering the library you would
bend the knee to a holy picture which extends from
ceiling to mantelpiece, and gaze with some reverence
at two Tintorettos on the near wall before you walked
up the polished stairs to the reception-room with its
significant contents, centred by a glass-topped table
containing mementoes of W. E. Gladstone.
It has been said that Madame Novikoff was the cause
which brought to unpunctuality that rigid observer of
the rules of time. After a conference in St. James's
ABOUT MYSELF AS A JOURNALIST 49
Hall he had armed her through the Green Park to
Claridge's, and thus deferred a dinner hour for a
hungry and protesting company.
Fully conscious of my weakness of light outlook and
casual observance which made me an unsteady thinker
and rash talker, Madame Novikoff accorded me some
intimacy, and took some interest in my frivolous
work and in my daughter's attempts at acting.
She would beg me to understand she counted dress
of considerable importance ; she would interrogate me
about French fashions and new jewellery, while I was
aware my knowledge of Cartier might be equalled by
hers of Cellini ; and she would give me a chance to
look into her deep cedar closet lined with sumptuous
sables, and I would grow audacious to the point of
discussing the white bear as a stole rather than as a
symbol of a great kingdom. She had an ineradicable
dislike for Jews, which she proclaimed in my hearing,
so that I confessed my origin and my faith, upholding
my pride in these.
She took my hand soothingly, but bending her
sternest expression upon me, she came to an arbitrary
decision.
" My dear, you cannot be Jewish any longer, upon
that religion has been built a better, and you must
adopt it."
She would not hear of my sincere conviction, for at
that moment she was almost angry with her beloved
son, the Governor of Baku, because he had drawn a
good Jew in his book.
She moderated her condemnation after his death,
when the Jews joined the Russians in erecting a monu-
ment in his memory ; but she never became reconciled
So MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
to my belief, and " You must not be a Jewess/' she
averred when she offered for my acceptance and
meditation a pamphlet entitled " Christ or Moses —
Which ? " She, however, admitted the following con-
ciliatory dictum of Professor Michaud :
" From a habit of detesting the Jews, people are
sometimes brought to depreciate Judaism and ascribe
to it almost materialistic doctrines. Judaism is cer-
tainly not Christianity, but neither is it materialism. "
Madame had desired to investigate the assertion of
Mr. Lucien Wolf that the teaching of Judaism is
spreading. He wrote : " This virtual assumption that
the limits of human knowledge can extend no farther
than those of the visible world appears to me to be the
central idea of Judaism." But her intention which
crystallised to publication was not unanimously ap-
proved, and some dissenters went so far as to accuse
her of heresy, and Gladstone had answered her appeal
for judgment.
She granted me permission to publish a letter of
his. Modestly, I take a very small portion.
" MY DEAR MADAME NOVIKOFF,
I do not see why the word ' heresy ' should be
flung at you. Heresy is a very grave matter, and should
not be charged except in cases where not only the sub-
ject-matter is grave but also the whole authority of the
Church or Christian community has been brought to
bear. I conceive, however, that the question of Jewish
opinion on a future state, as opened in the Old Testa-
ment, is a question quite open to discussion. My own
state of information is by no means so advanced as to
warrant the expression of confident and final conclu-
ABOUT MYSELF AS A JOURNALIST 51
sions. But I think there are some things that are clearly
enough to be borne in mind. We cannot but notice
the wise reserve with which the Creeds treat the sub-
ject of future state. After the period when they were
framed, Christian opinion came gradually, I believe,
to found itself upon an assumption due to the Greek
philosophy, and especially to Plato, namely, that of the
natural immortality of the human soul. And this
opinion (which I am not much inclined to accept)
supplies us, so to speak, with spectacles through which
we look back upon the Hebrew ideas conveyed in the
Old Testament.
W. E. GLADSTONE."
During the last few months I have sought and found
Madame Novikoff, still in Brunswick Place, a shy,
retiring house in a shy, retiring corner of Regent's
Park, where she was in excellent spirits and a no less
excellent black velvet gown, grey-capped in tasselled
wool. She was erect at the table, her hands yet busy
in service for her beloved Russia. Her immobile
features so characteristic of her descent from " the
magnificent Muscovite " are deeply lined with sorrow,
but she is upright in her bearing, if slow in her move-
ments, and as she observed, laughingly suiting her
words as ever to her listener :
!< If my morals were as weak as my legs my friends
would deny my acquaintance."
It was inevitable that I should ask her for a bone of
her biography, should demand a reminiscence or so of
the departed giants who had been her friends.
1 Tell me about Bismarck."
" How can I when I only saw him once ? "
52 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
" Of Queen Victoria/*
" She received me."
" Of Tsar Nicholas I."
" I was his goddaughter, and he was ever gracious to
me."
! Of Skoboleff."
" A martyred hero."
" Of Verestchagin."
" Splendid patriot who died in the arms of war, his
fervid obsession."
" Of Tyndall, of Froude, of Carlyle, of King-
lake ? "
:< I will tell you a story to amuse you. Kinglake was.
you are aware, of no religion, and I was always structc
by his courageous outspokenness on this. He said
once to me, ' I am a heathen, I dislike churches, and
had I my way I would write on every chapel,
church and cathedral only one line, " Important —
if true." '"
" But," she said, " I feel too much to talk of my
old friends. I will give you a maxim :
" One lives not where one dwells but where one
loves " ; and she continued, " I belong to two coun-
tries, but I have only one nationality, and I shall never
desert it."
Yet I coaxed her to confess that she grows more and
more conservative ; and so she fare welled me, " I am
glad to see you, but in writing of me I beg that your
favour may not make me ridiculous."
I went out into the gloom of Marylebone Road to
these parting words while feeling conscious that Lord
Melbourne was wise in his generation when he urged
that religion should not be allowed to pervade the
ABOUT MYSELF AS A JOURNALIST 53
sphere of private life, and I dared to restore myself to
my normal triviality by a remembrance of the old, old
tale of the negress when rebuked for her determination
to wed with a Chinaman. " You must not do it,
Sarah, think what your children will be."
!< I don't care if they'se Jews," defied the valiant if
vague ethnologist.
CHAPTER V
ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA
WHILST I was pursuing my lesser indus-
tries with a sufficiency of success to
appease the butcher and soothe the
dressmaker, Julia was passing through those various
phases of vexation and disappointment inevitably to
the novelist of earnest purpose. Whether the public
cheered or Fleet Street damned, she herself was never
satisfied, never attaining her own standard, and she
would always laugh at my assertion that her last was
the best book she or anyone else had ever written.
My extravagant praise did not provoke any belief in
herself, though it confirmed, to her derision, my
prejudice in her favour.
The reception of Dr. Phillips had brought as much
annoyance as pleasure. The Babe of Bohemia included
some misinterpretation of the Salvation Army with a
comprehension of the thirsty habits of journalists,
which contributed in a measure to its condemnation,
although in no way detracting from the extent of its
popularity. I am uncertain as to which volume fol-
lowed the other, and of the date of the interregnum
occupied by works of Art, but I know when disconcert-
ing blame fell upon her, for The Sphinx's Lawyer,
written to defend the undefendable Oscar Wilde, and
54
ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA 55
some other work of hers, had failed to meet the critical
estimation she thought its sincerity deserved, she
decided she would retire, she would be ruled out, she
could not bear to be misunderstood, she would not lay
herself open to such chance, she never wrote a line
that was not of humanity she had felt and observed, it
was recognition of her honesty as an artist she desired ,
she vowed she would write no more novels for ten years.
But ever Julians books were triumphant in achieving
public favour ; some great imagination going to the in-
genious murder by morphia of the wife in Dr. Phillips ;
no little prophecy of the coming of communal living
in Joseph in Jeopardy ; and great skill in combining
the^financial with the fighting aspect of the Boer War
in Pigs in Glover, wherein the death of the paralysed
mother is surely epic.
Happily the cash point of her ten years' abstinence
vow did not trouble her. She had more money than she
needed for herself, and she gave with an open-handed-
ness supposed, by man only, to be an attribute of man
only.
Julia's spirits were always splendid, even as her
vitality and her energy which overruled every condi-
tion ; and like all perfectly healthy people she was con-
vinced that physical weakness was under the control
of the sufferer.
My numerous ailments — affectionate relatives had
labelled me " not strong " — found her incredulous,
and although she filled my room with roses and my
sideboard with peaches, she was for ever chaffing
me with a likeness to " poor Anne," presented by
Richardson, as the delicate member of a whole family
and outliving the lot of them.
56 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Alas ! the similarity threatens to be true.
For all the characters in Julia's books she preferred
living models, and she took them unconscionably. I
have served a dozen times, often in a most unfavourable
light, she had no respect for my morals in print, did
not hesitate to laugh at my pathetic symptoms of ill-
ness, and had condemned my only daughter to a heart-
rending decease at the age of five. It was as inevitable
that others should think such conduct indecorous as
that I should find it merely amusing.
I always thought Julia's greatest gift lay in her power
to extract tears ; no sofa scene of passion, and she gave
us many, produced the sense of reality engendered by
her tales of little children, of bereft mothers, of stricken
wives, or of the approach of death. She never failed
to produce tears when she was trying to do so.
She was a flagrant sentimentalist although pleased
to imagine, except with her own children whom she
adored, that her best fitting mantle was well faced with
cynicism.
During the time she refrained from writing novels
she did not remain idle ; having started a small col-
lection of eighteenth-century engravings of mezzotint
and stipple, she particularly favoured the English
stipple colour prints, and because no book existed
telling her what she wanted to know about them, she
set to work and wrote one. It cost her years of study
and infinite labour — she never learnt quickly — but it
was a sumptuous affair, Messrs. Macmillan saw to
that, and the collectors gave it cordial welcome. She
followed this with the lives of John Raphael Smith
and of James and William Ward the mezzotint en-
gravers, falling back to novel writing, with a romantic
ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA 57
excursion in biography, Nelson's Legacy, the heroine
being no other than Emma Lady Hamilton, with
whose story she delighted to tamper in her favourite
eighteenth century, while she adorned her pages with
many reproductions of the Emma portraits by Romney.
I shared Julia's intense love of pictures, and during
her studies for material for her Art books I would
wait happily enough with her for hours while she
hunted in the Print Room of the British Museum.
It was long, however, before I managed to induce her
to understand my infatuation for the playhouse and
the players, although she went on the Committee of
the Independent Theatre, which was, I believe, the
first of all London societies formed for the improve-
ment of the drama. Here she divided her privileges
of administration with George Moore and Frank
Harris, while J. T. Grein was chairman, and the
record of the first season includes the presentation of
Widowers' Houses, Ghosts and The Strike at Arlingford,
the last being written by George Moore who was
already an established intimate of ours.
But Julia had little concern for the programmes,
showing far more in the subsequent supper parties at
her house where many would meet to debate hotly on
Ibsen and Bernard Shaw, and here I greeted amongst
notable others Ada Leverson, novelist and brilliant
wag, and always ready with some amusing tale to prove
such virtue. There was one elderly relation of hers
whose doings on her tongue never failed to produce
laughter ; she would describe him as the model of
good manners, " never even being rude to the gover-
ness/' She invented a race of Anglo-aliens, described
Lady X's parties as being mixed as any Russian salad,
58 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
and it was she who discovered a footlight favourite " who
looked like a lady on the stage and an actress off it."
Catching sight of me alone, she insisted I was the
only woman to supply a new design for a gown to
be dedicated conveniently to the rendezvous. Her
golden hair and her violet eyes of earnest depth were
assets, and she flirted alluringly with confession of
enterprises she would not have dreamt of undertaking.
She was delicately elusive in her methods, and her
airy nothings crystallised to wit as she spoke them in
her gentle voice ; she was reputed of half a dozen
serious romances and twice as many little intrigues,
while Punch owed to her many excellent jokes, and
there was no doubt whatever of her attractiveness.
Arthur Symons was of the many distinguished in
those crowds at Julia's, a tall, delicate young man of
shaven chin and light eyes, whose bearded picture by
Augustus John now holds so hauntingly the spiritual
essence of him.
He yielded me the compliment of a small poem. I
am abnormally proud of it for immortalising my gown
of pale yellow brocade with flowing sleeves of golden
net.
COLOUR STUDY
*> " She sits in a gown of gold
On the floor by the fire a-cold,
Wings of gold outspread
(Sleeves you may say instead).
And the firelight flushes a light
On a faultless shoulder's white,
Caressing a cheek that glows
From a lily into a rose.
She sits by the fire a-cold
A queen in a gown of gold.
A. S."
MY SISTER, JULIA FRANKAU (FRANK DANBY)
page 58
ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA 59
If Frank Harris were of the company, and this was
often the case, he would remain after the other guests
had departed, and I was ordered to sit to attention
with Julia while he read us some short prose stories or
related tales of buccaneering adventure in America . He
wrote and read very well, and perhaps it was churlish
to feel tired after 3 a.m. and to go to bed wondering
how he had effected the burials of the various
waiters he had shot for delay in attending to his
demands.
Julia took some pleasure in his deep husky voice and
had an immense opinion of his narrative powers, while
she had always a great predilection for parties con-
vened on any excuse, for idle gossip, or to exploit a
new cook, or as a prelude to the card table, or mainly
diplomatic for the advancement of some well-deserving
creature or cause. She introduced proudly the merits
of a mound of ice inset with sweetmeats and served
with boiling cherry brandy under the name of
" Paragraph Pudding."
From one of her dinners thus endowed, two per-
sonages stood and sat to my special interest, and
although there is no excuse whatever to imbue them
with the venal spirit, and perhaps they hated ice pud-
ding, I am sure they will both be honoured by the
printed association with each other.
Mrs. Belloc Lowndes enters as a very distinctive
figure with the bloom of 1840 to the credit of her
simply parted hair, her fichued shoulders, her intensely
feminine face almost childlike in its rounded curves
and rose-leaf complexion, her glinting eyes and her
tiny teeth, which looked as if they would bite the good
and bad out of everything.
60 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
She irradiated amiability, the slight roll to her " r "
giving hint, with her blue and pink dress, of her French
education, further emphasised by her vivacity and
underlined by her gay grace. I knew her at once as
an admirer of Julia's, whilst watching her delight in
whatever audacity " Frank Danby " was uttering to
create laughter and spread the merry atmosphere
essential to parties.
Mrs. Belloc Lowndes remained Julia's admirer,
asking and receiving from her always an appreciation
of her many books and a considerable comprehension
of her ambition and of the skill and work which went
to attain it.
Coupled with the name of Mr. Walkley, I hailed her
with no reason in my coupling, save that they sat
opposite to me during dinner.
I had much respect for A. B. W., who was then a
secretary at the Post Office, and a star feature in the
Star newspaper, where he had by his literary style and
classical knowledge altered the whole method of
writing about the stage which he showed tendency to
indulge with humour as indicated by Aristotle.
Dignity went ever to Mr. Walkley with a deliberate
reserve ; I knew him of academic honour, and I felt
shy of him and so wavered in my determination to
speak to him, even whilst I was observing that he was
genial — definitely genial — in his attitude towards a
pretty neighbour who was appealing to my sense of
costume in black silk and ermine with a pink rose at
her waist.
Perhaps he had sent her that pink rose and eleven
like it ? I wondered. There was little reason I should
not address Mr. Walkley ; as sister of his hostess it was
ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA 61
obviously my duty to do so, I argued, while trying to
catch his eye to prelude the audacity.
The pretty lady dropped her pink rose, by accident
or design I do not know, and the signal for the drawing-
room synchronised to leave me undecided. But what
woman wants held the usual sequel of divine co-opera-
tion, and half an hour later I was arguing with Mr.
Walkley about actresses, and his excuse for having
expressed a conviction that a critic does his work
better if the beguiling beauties behind the footlights
withheld themselves from his acquaintance.
I wonder if Mr. Walkley might have been included
in my intimate friends to this day if I had not offered
him a boiled chop for luncheon on a dull morning ; his
taste is unimpeachable, and he might have liked me,
but he could never have accepted my cook. I know
that now, whilst I comprehend that a cordon bleu or
even a heroine inspired by Beeton may prepare many
feasts.
How, when, or why it happened, I regret his aliena-
tion, for I am aware A. B. W. can be a charming com-
panion to women, betraying considerable intelligence
about their clothes and declaring that he likes Fashion
because it is so absurd. In his latest book, Pastiche
and Prejudice, where he is convicted as delightful
essayist, he confesses to a close observance when he
propagates his protest against the enforced square patch
in the heel of the finest silk stocking.
However, when not at his work he is to be found
most frequently at the Garrick Club, and I am re-pos-
sessed by my consciousness of his reserve and the fact
that he is the most precious ornament of The Times,
so that I dread his gentle irony while I venture,
62 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
* Why should you not write a foreword to my
book ? "
Of course Mr. Walkley never dreams I shall have
sufficient courage to publish the amusing and most
chivalrous argument he sends against any such
proceeding.
" Write a foreword to your book ? Not if I know
it ! And that is the point : I don't know it, I don't
know what your book is to be. Mainly fiction, I guess :
and, so far as your threatened allusion to myself is
concerned, I am sure no allusion can tell the truth
about me. The dark and dangerous deeps of a com-
paratively simple life are not thus to be fathomed.
You think you know, but you don't, and never did,
and it doesn't matter because what you think you know
you daren't print, so by all means substitute a de-
liberate but printable fiction as you will. But don't
let that deter you from being reasonably (however
fictitiously) indiscreet about your other faithful if less
fascinating friends. Poor dears ! I look forward to
reading about them with a pleasure wholly untainted
by belief. A B w „
In one of Pinero's plays the drunken wastrel of noble
birth is accused by his misalliance :
" He's always maudlin about his blessed family."
I could maudle about this blessed bit of mine,
Julia, until the end of time. I could dilate on Julia at
home and Julia out, on her complete indifference to
the social position her talent might have brought her,
on her absorption in her possessions, on the small
ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA 63
number of her intimate friends, on her acute love of
the beautiful in pictures, furniture and china, her
obsession for disguising her best qualities, and her
exquisite capacity for embroidery.
There was no sort of needlework she could not
accomplish to perfection, and while she plied her own
needle so well it was impossible for her to resist any
opportunity to add to her rarely beautiful samples of
old Chinese and Japanese execution. To show these
to their advantage she would have huge pillows of
embroidery in vivid colours placed upon black satin
chairs and sofas, while her black satin curtains would
be draped behind pelmets gay with Oriental designs
interrupted with gold thread ; famille verte and famille
rose blossomed in gorgeous colour around her pots and
jars of all shapes, and very good indeed was the effect
with her jade green walls and old lac cabinets and
the little Japanese trees which held for her a great
fascination.
I can see her now clad in a black Japanese gown,
invaded by golden dragons, seated in a deep chair ; at
her back an enormous cushion embroidered with a
ponderous elephant lightly burdened with scarlet
flowers ; her feet upon a stool traced with pink and
red roses, her hands holding a piece of cambric, her
eyes looking up from this to fix themselves in dreamy
adoration on a little stunted dark green tree rooted in
sand planted in blue and white china.
She was weaving a story round it, not quite sure
whether she had imagined it or read it.
I felt myself back in that double bed of our nursery
days.
" Go on," I encouraged her.
64 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
" It was planted by a gardener who fell in love
with his master's daughter, the girl was sent away to
die after her marriage with a prince, and the spirit of
the departed came back to visit her lowly lover. She
was wearing a white kimono with white chrysanthe-
mums in her hair, while she bade him to plant an oak
for her, to water it with his blood, and she promised
when that oak had become a tree she would return
and lead him to paradise.
But the tree grew slowly, and only when he was an
old man shrivelled and bent and bowed they found
him one morning dead beside the tree, his pruning-
knife by his side, a great gash in his throat whence the
blood had run over the yet young oak. The root shows
now the stain. "
" Hullo," she said, looking up, " you there ? "
' Yes, of course I am.5'
" I was dreaming about that oak tree."
" Pity, it is a cedar," I objected, not comprehending
her passion for these death-in-life abortions which my
practical mind sees as through the wrong end of a
telescope, frozen corpses of beautiful lives.
However, Julia grew bored with the entirely Eastern
atmosphere of her room, properly assured that the
old English colour prints of her newer fancy did not
seem quite at home in it, and that the need for Stafford-
shire was urgent, and it was to their better bestowal
that she sought and found them the more righteous
dwelling which oddly enough had been in occupation
by Emma Lady Hamilton at the time when Nelson
was visiting her.
It was a charming old house wherein every crooked
door and slanting floor gave its tottering testimony
ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA 65
to the date of its building. It confessed its birth on
every worm-eaten panel, and, provided though it
might be with porcelain baths and internal telephones,
it never looked a day younger. What hunts we had in
old furniture shops to stamp it further with its correct
tradition. But Julia would frequent Christie's as much
in the interests of the bargain she did not obtain as of the
game of Bridge which never failed her in the vicinity.
Julia and I had much diversity of opinion about
cards and gambling ; in the earlier days I endeavoured
to follow her lead and stultify my own inclination just
for the pleasure of being with her, but I gave up the
job with some relief when after I had been struggling
for months to surprise her with my efficiency in solo
whist she said it was a stupid game, and she should
never play anything but Bridge.
She never taught me cards, and I have never missed
the knowledge, but I was proud in making her add
dress to the arts of her interest, although she had no
need to achieve elegance on her own initiative, her
means permitting her the services of the most deserv-
ing dressmakers, yet she did completely abandon the
careless ways of her youth and condescend to employ
elaborate means to the attractive end. Together we
investigated varied artists in personal decoration to
enjoy their patter in the cause of " copy " as much as
in the higher excuse of beauty.
Regardless of the proverbial birth-rate of familiarity
our perpetual companionship left us with an unchang-
ing admiration for each other, and for James. What-
ever weakness or strength we were displaying, we
never forgot the parental edict backed by Watts,
" Love one another."
66 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
We three, Julia, James and I, each thought the other
" so clever, " becoming so inextricably mixed up in
the minds of the journalists that James would complain
laughingly, " I cannot write a play without Julia and
Eliza getting a notice of their accomplishments," and
he would always declare he dare not reveal his age
until he had looked into the columns of Who's Who,
and regulated his years to fit the fictions there of the
birthdays of his sisters.
Julia would send her proofs to James, and James
would relate a yard of scenario, and if I had immor-
talised a draper in doggerel, a weakness of mine, I
could find audience in brother and sister alike. But
the most remarkable proof of Julia's unassailable
loyalty was her coming with me to the St. James's
Hall where Ada Crossley sang some words I wrote for
Liza Lehmann to set to music. Julia and I both suf-
fered from a deficiency of music, but she was less deaf
to melody, and had indeed, through a deep friendship
with a well-known violinist, succeeded in writing a
book with a musician as hero.
She possessed exceptional forces, never sparing her
energy to reach a desirable goal, and she fell through
her enthusiasm for Bridge into some tiresome litiga-
tion which, although crowned with success as to the
outward seeming, brought in the excitement of its
victory some untoward weakness of the heart. I knew
her to be ill, although she always declared defiantly as
if insulted by the enquiry :
" I am quite well, thank you, do not fuss about me,
attend to your own personal ailments," she would
scoff and evade my anxiety.
Yet I was right about that celebrated cause, and
ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA 67
after the triumph celebrated in a magnificent luncheon
at the Savoy, she confessed she was tired and dis-
gusted ; the whole thing, including the splendid
success, was vulgar and silly ; she admitted that
her position had been impregnable, and that the
malice which attacked her might have been left
to do its worst without the declaration of twelve
jurors.
But she set herself gaily to the task of founding in
the interest of a mixed community of card players the
Cleveland Club which flourishes to this hour to add
another stone to the monument of evidence of her
ability to achieve whatever she undertook.
When writing a novel she became, or wanted to
become, a hermit, and my constant interruptions of
her solitude in London being incorrigible, she would
migrate to Brighton, to Eastbourne, to France or to
Italy rather than offend by refusing me admittance.
But yet I absorbed some of her time and thoughts
wherever she wandered, and amongst many enchanting
letters, I quote one written from Sicily.
" The nett idea of this holiday is that the title has
been taken.
It never can happen again.
It never can happen again that I live in the curve of
an exquisite bay land-locked with brown and purple
mountains snow-crowned, with villages nestling at
their base ; that from my windows I can lean out and
pick ripe oranges ; that the terrace garden has large
lilies growing in profusion near banks of violets ; that
I can pluck hyacinths as if they were wild flowers and
fill my room with them. It never can happen again
68 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
that I make friends with an Italian gardener who pays
me daily visits with hands laden with garden sweets,
narcissi and roses, mignonette and some great scarlet
flowers whose name I do not know.
It never can happen again that I write a complete
novel in six weeks, and that when I want to play
trente et quarante I shall find it next door to me with
every element of disorder rigorously excluded and my
seat reserved in the best position ; footstool and
cushion, card and pencil brought to me, and the
croupier sympathising when I lose and suggesting to
me when to vary my game.
And never again will a man like Professor Salinus
take trouble to conduct me personally over a wonderful
museum and teach me so much in so short a time
while telling me that I have as yet seen nothing.
It never can happen again, and I know this will
interest you specially, that I am thrown in daily con-
tact with an actress and that she has revolutionised my
whole point of view of women on the stage."
In fact during that trip Julia became enchanted by
two actresses, by Ellaline Terriss, to whom she alludes,
and by Edna May. She had formed her previous
opinions upon quite an uninstructed basis rather
upon the principle of that man who grumbled at his
newly made wife always talking about money.
" Money, money, money at every meal," he confided
to a friend, who made questioning answer :
" What does she do with it all, Tom ? "
61 I don't know, I never give her any."
That was Julia with regard to the stage folk, she
never knew any until I insisted that she should, and
yet she had the audacity to condemn them wholesale.
MYSELF LOOKING AT THE PORTRAIT OF MY SISTER
To face page 68
ABOUT MY SISTER JULIA 69
However, she lived to repent as thoroughly as she had
sinned, making the honourable amend when she
wrote The Heart of a Child, setting on high the honest
little gutter girl who went on the boards, as the greatest
lady in the high circles she reached with all dramatic
convention.
That book attained the widest popularity of any she
had ever published, and once or twice the story has
been produced on a film, and in its dramatic form
Renee Kelly has played the heroine in London and the
provinces.
The letter from Sicily concluded with a firm deter-
mination to meet all the actresses and actors I could
possibly present to her, and it struck a more vital note.
" Perhaps it will be better for me to let my new book
simmer a bit, I can finish it in three weeks if ? ? ? "
An interrogation which should have terminated,
!< If you will give me leisure."
I could never do without my daily pilgrimage to
my oracle if I could reach her, and although there
existed the strict rule of " not before a quarter-past
one " I know I transgressed it often, in my anxiety for
her company and her counsel.
That I proved of some use to her I realise so proudly
in a few pencilled lines written during the last days of
her last illness, when a bad attack of influenza kept me
from her bedside.
" Dearest, I miss you beyond words, yet desire you
to do everything your alarming physician orders ; I
find Twilight depressing ; how could I have done it ?
Do you think you could see me through another ? "
CHAPTER VI
ABOUT CECIL RALEIGH, ALFRED SUTRO, THE MILHOLLAND
FAMILY AND W. T. STEAD
OCIALISM is the religion of the future."
I seem to have heard something like that
before, and on the same tongue too, I con-
jectured, as I caught its echo at a corner of Regent's
Park, and turned to see Cecil Raleigh, brown felt-
hatted, white-stocked, tweed-suited, with one hand
affectionately placed on his bicycle while his other
held the eternal cigarette, and he was dogmatising to
a bright-faced maiden whose rapt attention suggested
she was accepting him as a prophet of all the best;,
gospels.
The clock was nearing four, and the encounter took
place just outside my house, so tea for three was most
clearly indicated. Over those cheering cups Cecil
Raleigh proved extremely amusing. We decided to
meet often in the future, although there was no point
of view of morality, politics or religion which did not
find us at vehement difference, but we shared an en-
thusiasm for the theatre, and he was engaged in
preparation of one of his melodramas which annually
filled the stage at Drury Lane Theatre, sometimes in
collaboration with other authors, but always under his
personal and violent direction.
Cecil Raleigh was undoubtedly very clever, and no
70
ABOUT CECIL RALEIGH & OTHERS 71
one was more cocksure of this than Cecil Raleigh,
while he had no turn for sentiment, so that his com-
panionship was a pleasure if I did not venture to
dispute with him, and proved willing to listen to his
opinions rather than to dwell upon mine. However,
I am aware I liked to be with him, and that I indulged
that liking to some extent. He would come to tell me
of the scenes he was planning, of the witticisms he
knew would " go," and occasionally he would disturb
all the household in his determination to illustrate an
incident of his fancy. When he was writing The Price
of Peace every walking-stick and fire-iron from base-
ment to garret were employed in elucidating the
righteous stacking of the Boer guns.
Now and again he would throw out an idea for a
new plot, never failing to resent rudely my hint of its
likeness to others. He revelled in highly coloured
crime and catastrophe by sea and land and under the
.sea ; but into every circumstance, however appalling,
he never forgot to introduce to public taste a purple
patch of blatant humour, served with sporting-jargon
sauce.
Cecil had a strange individuality, bred, and to some
degree cultured, as much in the training stable owned
by his father as in the so-called literary arena where
he came to stand to his profit.
He was at once contemplative and alert, ignorant
and well informed. God and Gibbon shared his best
regards.
His well-kept fingers twisted his monster moustache
into upright points, whilst he gave forth dogma and
defied contradiction. He delivered his unalterable
doctrines with abrupt little sniffs, and dilated at length
72 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
upon his certainty that he knew all the righteous rules
of life, of drama, of democracy, of domesticity and of
disinfectants, the last two being favourite hobbies,
somewhat trying in their practice to those who tended
him.
He was accounted to be a romantic rover, but
actually he was devoted to his own home, and he
would delight in interviewing the dustman, making
personal appeals to his cook, playing mayor in the
mews, and inscribing on blackboards prohibitions to
tradesmen, beggars or organ-grinders. His reputation
as Lothario rather pleased him, although it was mainly
based upon his affection for one wife of one friend, two
wives of his own not simultaneous, and the occasional
companionship of a certain flirtatious flibbertigibbet
who summed up the affair, " Quite harmless ; two
years' daily cycling round the park with Cecil Raleigh
— total asset, one new bicycle bell."
As a matter of fact Cecil Raleigh was no casual giver
of gifts, but I have known him help most generously
an enfranchised prisoner of undoubted guilt. He had
no great opinion of women, but he exacted their
services greedily, and obtained their devotion without
much effort, while he resented those who were clever
as deeply as he was bored by those who were not.
I was happily associated with him in the production
of White Heather, for Arthur Collins invited me to
assist in designing the costumes which were to grace
one scene on the Scotch moors, and another at
Boulter's Lock in the summer-time. There were no
less than ninety frocks altogether, and I was given a
free hand in their detail. I thought it would be a
commission after my own heart, and to my complete
ABOUT CECIL RALEIGH & OTHERS 73
capacity, but I do not believe that I did it particularly
well, being anxious to obtain diversity in style with
harmony in colour for the groups ; and although
Arthur Collins was most kind, I rather failed with the
girls who resented me, and would sulk should I object
to a hat placed back to front or poised sideways four
inches above the hair. However, under the hand of
Arthur Collins, who upheld firmly my ruling, the ulti-
mate result was pronounced good, and the ultimate
cheque supremely satisfactory with its accompanying
letter of thanks.
But this intrusion into White Heather was not my
first introduction behind the scenes of Drury Lane.
I had stood there with Augustus Harris when Arthur
Collins was indispensably efficient adjutant, and it was
"Collins" here, " Collins " there and " Collins "
everywhere during the dress rehearsal of a ballet in a
pantomime, while I was acting as special reporter on
Court trains cleverly contrived from curtain net and
cretonne.
In whatever direction I might endeavour to persuade
my pen to wander, I was never disassociated from
Dress in the mind of any, and I was never allowed to
desert that first love.
Occasionally I met with criticism, even the accusa-
tion of being over-prodigal, and a dangerous influence
in economics, a menace to the more frugal proprieties.
Long before the Boer war I had been taken to task
for these sins.
I was visited one day by a female representative of
an admirable provincial journal. She was incidentally
a philanthropist, and one of the worst-dressed women
I had ever seen. She called to impress upon me the
74 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
error of my ways. She admonished me something like
this :
" Women read your alluring accounts of gorgeous
elegance and regardless of the small incomes of their
husbands and the many claims upon them they are
attracted by the desire to buy clothes they cannot
afford, and disaster to home and happiness is the
inevitable result. Now, as a woman who works for
the help of the many, I come to you to implore you to
give up this wicked folly of yours. It is doing incal-
culable harm, and so far as I can see no good."
There was the rub. " So far as she could see."
But she could see such a very little distance. She
could not see how large a part dress plays in the general
scheme of beauty, nor how important a factor it is in
international commerce, nor how it agitates in our
home industries ; she could not see that temptation
might afford women an excellent chance of practising
self-denial ; and she could not recognise that even while
I lingered lovingly in a fairyland of Fashion, and sum-
moned all the adjectives I knew to describe the most
magnificent costumes, I always advocated that every
woman should be guided rather by her bank balance
than by an overdraft, and that, above all, she should as
anxiously consider what is becoming to her position as
to her person.
While I had put these points to my visitor I could
not help noting that the short tops of her laced boots,
being too large for her ankles, revealed some hideous
grey worsted stockings, above which a striped yellow
and brown petticoat hung assertive and unashamed.
I observed, too, that the back of her blouse was
querulously striving to separate itself from her skirt,
ABOUT CECIL RALEIGH & OTHERS 75
that her collar was slightly at one side, and that,
while her tie was unpinned, her hat was transfixed
with no less than six pins, their points sticking out at
different angles on each side of her head. To me she
was the beastly example.
I forgave her an absurd interview which she printed
ultimately, and proceeded unabashed upon my offend-
ing way, gladly taking the opportunity to play the
dressing part in White Heather, while Cecil Raleigh
was a constant source of entertainment. Arthur
Collins was splendidly first, and I had much instruction
from both in the intricate secrets of stage craft.
The small tank of live fish, which by means of
magnifying lights did duty as environment to a sub-
marine fight between two divers, was a revelation of
expert ingenuity, but I never had chance to brave
a canvas avalanche or suffer a salted earthquake.
Arthur Collins was one of the few managers to dwell
perpetually in the country, and an observer has said
of him, " In the summer he plays croquet until it is
time for billiards or bridge, and bridge or billiards
until it is time for croquet again, complaining bitterly
that the early birds will spoil his slumbers and upset
his strokes/'
Cecil Raleigh thought he knew all about acting,
about stage-managing, and scenic effect on the technical
side, and he was prepared at a moment's notice to
jump on the boards and demonstrate this efficiency.
He had a favourite theory which he hoped might
shock. :< I look upon Shakespeare as the tall hat of
English literature, constantly affected by people who
don't like him because they regard him as the outward
and visible sign of intellectual respectability."
76 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Cecil Raleigh was the first dramatist to combine the
film with the spoken word in The Diamond Express,
produced in the Coliseum's inaugurating bill.
But he was conscious of his limitations in literature,
and no sincerity went to his love-making, so that when
writing in collaboration with Henry Hamilton he would
wisely delegate this to him with any " bit of pathos "
he thought necessary to his tale, while he supplied
liberally the surprising sensation and the repartee
essential to the " smart " lady or the comic underling,
never omitted from the cast.
He was an incorrigible farceur, and once in an inter-
val of scene-shifting he sat with me in the empty stalls
gravely refuting my charge of cynicism by a story of
unrequited affection. He related how he had ap-
proached a young matron of our mutual acquaintance.
1 What do you say to a few days at the Ship Hotel,
Brighton ? "
The answer being in the negative, I should guess he
had astonished the object of his dalliance with his
careless resignation, as he announced it to me.
" All right, perhaps you know best. Good-bye, I
have no time for wooing."
Some might have misinterpreted the narrative as an
insult even in the telling, but to me it was intensely
funny, if not exactly establishing Cecil's claim to
tenderness. I could so easily visualise the circum-
stances, the little sniff of its accompaniment with a
cigarette tapped to its best conduct, heralding the
swift departure to wheel round the inner circle which
was Cecil's unchangeable habit for several hours daily.
" I believe the world at its end will find you on your
machine encompassing the park," I would hazard ; but
ABOUT CECIL RALEIGH & OTHERS 77
his world came to an end very shortly afterwards. He
fell a victim to throat trouble, which he had been trying
to benefit at Folkestone, where I last saw him after he
had filled my room with flowers in glad greeting. Poor
Cecil ! he seems yet to haunt that corner of Brunswick
Place where he so faithfully lingered. Many other
memories for me lurk here, each stone of the pavement
has been trodden by the feet of those I have known
and liked.
Here often have I walked and talked with Alfred
Sutro, in devoted attendance upon a superb sheep-dog,
mud-laden from his colossal tree-trunkish legs up to
his burly grey and white chest. Little chance of
serious converse with Alfred Sutro when he is accom-
panied by a dog. The youngest and prettiest of us
would get poor grace. It is a complete lesson in the
science of animal-loving to watch Alfred Sutro look
at a dog and a dog look at Alfred Sutro. He beams
through gold-framed glasses, it responds with suffused
eyes. Dramatist does not pat dog, nor dog dramatist,
but each knows the other as a thoroughly good fellow,
and both are right.
The strange case of Alfred Sutro, writer of plays, is
his whole-hearted acknowledgment of the dramatic
talent of others, holding in special reverence Pinero,
and being little worried about the parlous state of the
legitimate drama, and always the perfect optimist on
its prominent place in permanent politics. Add to
this Alfred Sutro Js disapproval of physical pain for
others, his confirmed belief in the good influence of
the good player at Bridge, his definite leaning towards
lovely woman, his irrepressible raillery at the genus
snob, and there you have the man as I know and
78 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
admire him ; even, yes even when he tells me one of
those stories about a dog which is almost as hard to
swallow comfortably as others which hang on the
fisherman's line.
At Brunswick Place again I first knew the remark-
able Milholland family, meeting them at Madame
Novikoffs, and instinctively hailing them at once as
comrades.
John E., the father, was one of the first editors,
before the powerful days of Whitelaw Reid, of the
New York Tribune, and his wife was Jean of stately
mien, and fine examples of the new world were their
youngsters Inez and Veda and " little " John as I yet
call him, although he measures some six feet two.
John Milholland, senior, had the head of a lion, the
heart of a lamb, the simple faith of a Quaker and the
complicated brain of all the best American financiers ;
odd, bewildering compound, but incidentally he was
very handsome and inclined to flatter.
He spent many years in England whilst trying to
persuade different Governments of the advantages of
his pneumatic tube postal service, and then in despair
and maybe disgust at their unintelligent miscompre-
hension of his point of view, he devoted himself ex-
clusively to Philadelphia, resting from his labours
occasionally at his birthplace in the Adirondacks,
where already my visit is a decade overdue.
Much of the pride and joy of the lives of Mr. and
Mrs. John E. Milholland went with the death of their
daughter Inez, who gave her beautiful young life to
the political cause, starting upon an extensive tour to
lecture when she was already ill. How lovely she was
when I first saw her with the complete grace of an
ABOUT CECIL RALEIGH & OTHERS 79
unchipped Greek goddess, and excelling at all sports,
while she was flirting outrageously with Fabianism
and had caught Suffrage in its most mad moments.
She was ever adorably feminine in her obstinacy, and
in face and figure she was very like her mother, one
of the most elegant well possessed of Paquin, and
easily to be pictured as a social leader. But Inez had
no such ambition, she was just rabid on the woman
question, which she put and answered and fought
with typical energy from her early days at Vassar
College.
She marched through the streets of London in the
first procession convened to claim a hearing for the
Vote ; and, mounted on a white horse in New York,
she led the shirt-waist strikers with such enthusiasm
that the special pleading she had imbibed to serve her
as barrister was in full use before the police-court
judge was persuaded of her right to incite her fellows
to free rebellion should she desire to do so.
She was an enterprising sportswoman was the all-
compelling Inez, and she married a delightful Dutch
gentleman, a traveller she met when crossing over to
this side.
She consulted nobody ; she wished to marry him,
and despite some difficulty in the way, owing to the
difference of their nationalities, she gained her cause
in a morning, and the afternoon of that day found me
on the balcony of Mrs. Milholland's house in Prince
of Wales Terrace endeavouring, with the help of Signor
Marconi, to console her mother and compose a cable
to her adoring father, absent in New York.
Marconi, simple, sincere and charming creature,
projected a dozen schemes to soften the blow, even he
8o MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
would go back to America to break the news personally;
he was always a loyal friend, and he bore a great regard
for the Milhollands. However, time worked its usual
miracles, and John Milholland became reconciled, even
attached to his son-in-law, reflecting no doubt as
worshipping parents will that no man could have
been deserving of such honour as the hand of their
daughter.
One of the strangest social affairs I ever attended
was at that house of the Milhollands, Mrs. Milholland
for that occasion being in America and John E. host
on his own. Thoroughly soaked in the spirit of uni-
versal brotherhood (he had indeed sacrificed much
political position for his belief in the equality of Black
with White), he was distributing hospitality to a com-
pany of many colours — white, brown, black and yellow
— and including boldly the loyal and the seditious
from China, from India, from West, East and South
Africa.
Speeches were made to air various grievances and
to cavil at England as colonist, and William T. Stead
took the chair, or at least he took the corner of the sofa,
where he lolled at ease, sitting on either side of the fence
as demanded by the eloquence and the best traditions
of well-balanced loyalty. A Zulu and a Boer in flagrant
hate towards Great Britain had numerous wrongs
to voice, and Lady Solomon, who was present,
seemed to understand them all, if not to condone
them all.
An English Protestant clergyman uprose to declare
that only those who had lived with coloured races
could imagine the difficulties of dealing justice to
them, and that for his part he admitted candidly he
ABOUT CECIL RALEIGH & OTHERS 81
had gone out in full prejudice that they were oppressed,
and he had come home convinced of the amazing
toleration of their treatment.
" Persecution never yet produced progress " was a
dogma delivered by an educated magnate of Liberia,
to be answered by my sister Julia, a most reluctant
orator, that " Jews have flourished beneath it."
" Be a sportsman," urged my host in a loud voice,
" and take a black man down to supper."
The black man appointed smiled with condescen-
sion upon my invitation and showed me lovely white
teeth, but no hint whatever of his sense of the honour
I was supposed to be doing him. He spoke admirable
English, and had no excuse for this reticence, so I
asked him :
" Do you resent being called a black man ? "
Another grin while he shook his head. " No, you
all amuse me very much."
I demanded of Stead later what this might mean
really, much revolutionary rumour being popular, and
Stead just wagged his beard in reply, and quoted some
portentous paragraph which he had contributed in the
last issue of his beloved Review of Reviews.
W. T. Stead had been the hero of a hundred fights,
and was possessed of a personality well armoured to
the attack of feminine curiosity.
" An angel with an eye to business " he had been
defined with some humour but with little excuse, for a
martyrdom in prison after playing Crusader in the
cause of virgin purity was no optical delusion, but a
sorry fate which had befallen him ; and small comfort
to follow in writing of his experience, albeit he was
Jehovah amongst journalists and a man of most
82 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
unusual gifts, with a deep reverence for all things
holy, and some psychic extension to his unfaltering
faith.
Never were eyes so blue, so piercing, as Stead's, the
heavens at their brightest steel plated : and his soft
white hair above, and soft white beard below his pink
cheeks, gave him the air of a highly discriminating
dove, or a hawk from the best celestial circles. He
uplifted his chin as he spoke, and his open mouth re-
vealed his nonconformist outlook on dental convention,
while he laid much emphasis on the blessedness of his
own married state, and evinced much inquisitiveness
about mine. He was a zealot for the good of the
multitude, yet I could never believe the story that he
had once " put his arms round the waist of a wife
while imploring her to be faithful to her husband."
He was magnetic in his addresses, but they would
border on the verbose, yet he had many worshipping
disciples, faithful adorers, who felt he could neither
do nor say wrong ; and none were more persuaded of
his tremendous intellect, worth and influence in
England and on the Continent, where he played
diplomat, than was John E. Milholland.
One evening under his auspices Stead and I again
met, and I was immensely struck by a pronouncement
of his which followed arguments over the world's
likely condition half a century onward.
No one had shed much light upon the possible
evolutions, though many had put forth opinions at
tiresome length.
Stead, in his might, summed up to illuminate chance.
" We must calculate upon the two greatest influences,
Jews and airships. "
ABOUT CECIL RALEIGH & OTHERS 83
Pretty good that, so many years ago ; and now Lord
Reading is Viceroy of India, Sir Herbert Samuel
stands for England in Palestine, and the airship's flight
to fame and victory overrides all the discovered and
undiscovered countries of the universe.
" We who are about to sail salute you," reads
John E. Milholland's last telegram— and to satisfy my
hunger for sentimentality, as Americans will, he
added :
" Your wire arrived ; was it written upon the lid of
the refrigerator ? "
CHAPTER VII
ABOUT HENRY IRVING
I DO not know to what beneficent fairy I owed
my first introduction to Henry Irving. I sus-
pected some late defaulting guest : anyway, I
was summoned by telephone to Prince's Restaurant to
enjoy the hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Ellis,
whom I had known from my childhood, when he was
a writer of plays and the proprietor of the Court
Circular, and she united amiability with other social
graces which led to many happy evenings in their
house at St. John's Wood.
Whenever I turned my face towards Henry Irving
during that portentous evening meal, and I was high-
placed next to him, those verses by Browning recurred
to me insistently :
" Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again ?
How strange it seems and new !
But you were living before that
And also you are living after ;
And the memory I started at —
My starting moves your laughter.
I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand's breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about :
84
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 85
For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle feather !
Well, I forget the rest."
Lucky that I was embarrassed to dumbness, so that
Irving was spared their recitation at my tongue.
Irving 's personality overwhelmed me against his will
and mine, yet he was quite simple, as the truly great
are, and he gave attention to my affairs rather than to
his own.
But then his greeting, " How are you ? " unlike the
greetings of others, never enclosed the thought, " How
am I ? "
That evening I must have been the dullest neigh-
bour, although encouraged gently to some measure of
confidence by a sympathetic nod now and again, when
he questioned, " Have you a husband and children ? "
to be made aware of my sad glad state. Irving listened
with apparent pleasure when, in the name of all the
Jews, I ventured to thank him for his representation
of Shy lock.
Yet the awe of him was strong upon me, and I
approached more comfortably to Beatty Kingston, who
sat on my right full of his recently published Monarchs
I have Met, so that I enquired of him, impudently
enough, the best method to obtain success in jour-
nalism. He was a master of the craft, and gave im-
mediate answer, " You should travel " ; very sound
advice too, but difficult to bring to fruition.
The monarch I had just met persisted amiably until
I recovered my self-possession to take my normal
notice of elegance in costume, to admire his jutting
collar which separated widely to display his square
86 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
chin, and to observe the unusual narrowness of his
sleeves from elbow to wrist, deliberate accentuation of
his slender, graceful hands.
My courage rose even to the protestation of my
absorbing love for the theatre and my ungratified
desire to see him in Waterloo.
" Where do you live ? " he asked, and I told him of
Brunswick Place as my dwelling, whilst I added, " next
door to the French Convent, where the Sisters wearing
beautiful blue veils walk up and down in a garden."
" Um," he mused aloud, " I am sure you do not
wish it had been a monastery."
Thus I believe we crossed the first quarter of an
inch of the way to mutual interest, and yet another
was overstepped when the evening came to an end,
with some of the assembled ladies claiming their right
to embrace him. I watched the progress of kissing- time
to catch his whimsical glance, just a spark to light me
to comprehension of that keen humour which was so
delightfully his.
The morning after brought me evidence of his
remembrance in a note containing two stalls for
Waterloo. My mother was prodigiously pleased by
that note, telling the day's visitors of its contents,
which ran :
" Nothing much to see, but a pleasure to know you
will be present."
I missed through diffidence that chance given to
write and express my supreme delight in his perform-
ance as Corporal Brewster, late of the 3rd Guards,
and I did not meet Henry Irving again until some
months later when, persuaded by the picturesque
poetry and prose of Clement Scott, I was staying at
MY DAUGHTER NITA AT THE AGE OF 15.
To face page 86
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 87
Cromer whilst he, with his son Laurence, was at
Sheringham preparing the scenes for Peter the Great.
" Fine work that for a boy," he would declare and
declare again whilst we sat on the hillside near the
Links Hotel after the ceremony of his first visit to me
had disappeared in the constant practice of his coming.
Sheringham is situated a few miles from Cromer,
and the horsed equipage of the time made it the
convenient Mecca for tea.
Shall I ever forget that first arrival which I had pro-
posed by telegram : so nervously I sat on the verandah
watching alternately my young daughter in elaborate
gyrations on a bicycle and the grey-hatted passenger
in the double-horsed landau approaching up the wind-
ing road to the open front door, where a pompous
porter and a bowing manager held themselves in
readiness to express the honour the proprietors felt.
" That's all right," he demurred, as he made his
way towards my approach, no doubt quite aware of
my trepidation.
" Shall I have any power to amuse him " was the
undercurrent of my mind, " and will he soon be sorry
he came and make some transparenj excuse for leav-
ing ? " I was amazed at my audacity in inviting him.
I need not have been uneasy, his tact and kindness
would always tempt him to say most emphatically,
' Very interesting " at the moments when he was
superlatively bored.
Irving was a man of few words, he never used half
a dozen when four would serve, and three were the
average allotment to the casual acquaintance, signifi-
cant sounds intervening to fill any blanks.
I have been told that when Jowett met Irving, who
88 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
came to Oxford to express his approval of the founda-
tion of the O.U.D.S., everyone was anxious to know
what each thought of the other. Irving, when ap-
proached, hesitated, " Um, reserved I should say."
Jowett assailed for his opinion replied, " He seems
to think more than to speak."
I am almost as irritated now by reports of Irving's
reckless verbosity as I am by the entirely fictitious
pathos of his saying good-bye with his cat to the stage
door of the Lyceum Theatre. The animal left days
before he did, while Irving was rejoicing mightily at
an opportunity to sever himself from the Limited
Company, which had been founded upon his name ;
indeed he had joyfully paid £26,000 to be released
from the toils.
Again my indignation is aroused by narratives which
would portray him as sentimentalist, an eager orator
on trivial topics and a gay familiar to his friends and
associates. Though his letters and his telegrams were
cordial, even affectionate, he rarely addressed anybody
by a Christian name : invariably he used surnames.
Toole, his closest comrade, was never " Johnnie" to
him ; Joe Parkinson, a very old friend, and chairman of
the Reform Club, was always "Parkinson"; Walter
Collinson, his most trusted attendant, was alone
" Walter " to his constant calling. Never was Pinero
" Arthur," nor Hatton " Joe," nor Stoker " Bram,"
nor Tree " Herbert." When he spoke of Ellen Terry
he called her Miss Terry, rarely failing to add " a
God-gifted creature." Yet in many printed pages all
these and more have been given intimate names by
him.
This is a small matter but indicative of the lies which
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 89
spring up round the great dead, and of the truth of the
dictum, " What everybody says nobody knows/'
Assuredly very few knew Irving, though many relate
with gusto of long interviews with him, when they
had given him counsel on productions and scenery,
on the actors he should engage and those he should
dismiss. " Henry, you should have produced Ibsen "
is of that I-said-to-him category, recently enraging me
from the mouth of a man who would scarcely have
had the pluck to bid him good morning.
Irving was unconsciously formidable and detached.
His mien and his manners were different from others,
and his face modelled upon super-ecclesiastical lines
set him apart from ordinary walkers by the ordinary
way.
His right environments were rocks in Cornwall, or
Gothic cloisters, or dark oak screens, beneath a high-
framed roof curving to dim walls where ancient stained-
glass windows in stone frames stretch their jewelled
lengths to catch the sunbeams.
He looked like all the best bishops ought to look,
and once when he was recuperating at Margate after
a severe illness, and we had driven out to Canterbury
to meet Dean Farrar, I gazed at them standing together
upon those fatal steps where Becket was murdered,
and I was struck by the undoubted fact that the Dean
might so well have been the actor and the actor the
Dean.
I remember the Dean afterwards suggested tea at
the Deanery, and a return to the Cathedral later to
hear him preach ; but living's delicate health pro-
hibited an acceptance of the invitation, and as we drove
away he said how much he had wanted to remain,
90 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
adding modestly, " I think he would have liked it
too."
He smiled when I hazarded, " No doubt he would,
as you would have desired that he should hear your
Louis XI had he strayed within the precincts of the
Lyceum Theatre/'
But this adventure was far in advance of our fore-
gathering at Cromer. However, the course of true
narrative never runs quite straight, and my best critic
carps at my parenthetical crime in mere conversation,
so I proceed unabashed to justify my divergence, in
recalling that the first time I ever saw Irving in a
Cathedral was at Norwich, where he made pilgrimage
from Cromer with Sir John and Lady Hare, their
daughter and their son and his wife, who were in resi-
dence at the hotel.
Sir John was an ardent devotee to croquet and his
lady a dignified and beautiful devotee to Sir John.
Other distinguished amongst us were two Siamese
princes, younger brothers of the present King.
Purachatra, the elder, was a most genial youth, Ugala,
the younger, being less fluent in English, showed some
timidity, but both would join my daughter and the
other youngsters in the hall where an absurd game of
retrieving potatoes in spoons to an accompaniment of
wild laughter was the order of the evenings.
Oddly enough my daughter went to Bangkok on her
marriage to a Government official there, and Prince
Purachatra reminded her of this previous meeting.
They came across each other once more in London,
when during the war he had been denied his desire
to fight for England, and he voiced his disappointment
over our teacups, whilst an inquisitive score of urchins
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 91
waited round his little square car to gaze in wonder-
ment at the Siamese chauffeur, hatless, and undaunted
by their curiosity.
It seems a long way back to Cromer where Irving
and I and Laurence sat so many mornings discussing
the scenes, the circumstance and the cast for Peter the
Great.
" What about a less gloomy conclusion ? " dared
Irving once to Laurence's distress.
" No, no," he cried, " we must not pander, the
rebellious son was murdered, and we cannot hope
Peter was remorseful."
I listened, considerably proud of my privilege, whilst
Irving read a scene or so and Laurence sat glowing
with hope, but never interrupting except to assure his
father that the only actress in the world who could
play Euphrosyne, the young heroine, was Ethel
Barrymore, and he would smile complacently as he
pronounced his verdict, for he was deeply in love with
Ethel Barrymore.
When Irving and I skirted warily round the golf
links we often met Lord Suffield, and he would engage
Irving in conversation to direct his attention to some
adjoining land as a good investment, Lord Suffield at
that time being possessed of many " sites " — desirable
to dispose of. He was, however, more amusing when
he was relating his experience at the palace of Potsdam
where the Empress Frederick was laying out English
gardens without much applause from her German
people. Further, he gave us virile accounts of his
guidance of the beautiful ill-fated Empress of Austria,
through the difficult etiquette of the English hunting-
field.
92 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Fussie, the terrier I disliked because my soup would
grow cold in its bowl whilst his appetite was coaxed,
was our invariable follower, although retrieving sticks
and stones did not improve his cough nor ease his
slight limp. Irving was devoted to the little beast,
and would never have another dog after he died.
Laurence always declared that Fussie crept away and
committed suicide through a hole in the scenery
because his father spoke crossly to him during re-
hearsal. I hope he rests in peace, but he was stuffed
outside all canine recognition, so that he vanished from
sight to remain dear to memory.
As Irving and I walked at the slowest pace towards
Overstrand we often fell to talking of Clement Scott
and of his supreme knowledge of the art of acting.
Clement Scott and I had drifted into friendship under
the auspices of David Anderson, who founded a school
of journalism after proving his rights to presidency by
his political leaders in The Daily Telegraph.
I had conceived a tremendous admiration for
Clement Scott when I had been sent to interview him,
and he had greeted me with, " Never mind about the
interview. I will write that for you. Let me show
you a casket just arrived with the message of the Pope,
and then I will read to you The Triumph of Time"
Very well he read it too, beneath the light of candles,
flaming high and steady in the stand of ecclesiastical
convention.
I had great respect for Clement Scott for his facility
to write rapidly an illuminating criticism, and I was
by no means impervious either to his personal charm.
" You like Scott ? " asked Irving with a special con-
cern, for some controversy was then raging fiercely
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 93
around his attack upon the morality of the stage, and
Irving was ever a passionate protectionist of his
calling.
" You think that he's a good chap ? " he queried,
and we argued about that punctuating with " fitful,"
" emotional," " enthusiastic " our walk to the " Garden
of Sleep " which had inspired Clement Scott to verses
arriving at an incurable popularity, when enhanced by
the music of Isidore de Lara.
Most of the tower of the " Garden of Sleep " has
toppled over into the sea, but I possess an etching done
previous to its last moments. Churches and windmills
prevail in Norfolk, but the miller at Overstrand was
sturdy in his refusal to listen to the entreaties of the
vicar that he should worship in the ordained precincts.
" Noa," he would say, " God can hear me well
enough from my garden."
Irving nodded his acquiescence when he heard the
argument, while he was leaning over the gate at the old
mill-house where Swinburne had written, and he was
bending towards a great bed of flaunting yellow flowers
to express his perpetual joy in vivid colour.
Often, as he went on his way down those high-
hedged lanes, he would note the courtesy of the
villagers and gain confidence even from the tramps,
the stone-breakers and the gipsies. He would seem
to possess some kinship with all strollers, and in solitary
wanderings he would sometimes stay his footsteps by
an old vagabond who would offer a share of a mug of
cold tea with a lump of bread. Irving had the instinct
when not to give money as surely as he possessed the
desire to give it.
There obtains a story from the North when his
94 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
munificence had been somewhat unfortunate. Desir-
ing to go out upon the sea for a couple of hours, he
hired one Tom and a boat to his pleasure, rewarding
the toiler with no less than five pounds which he had
deemed so well expended that eight days afterwards
he thought he would repeat the experiment. Sending
down to the beach for Tom, he was informed, " Tom
can't come out, sir, he's been a-bed for a week past."
On a desolate little moor in Norfolk there was a
strange little shanty where a poor old crone held rights
over oddments of china, tambourines, sweets and
tobacco, and straw chairs.
" Pretty teapot, " he pointed out to me, a blue and
white specimen of an old-fashioned shape.
" That belonged to my grandmother ; I don't know
as how I want to sell it."
" Might be worth two pounds," reflected Irving
aloud.
" May be I had best let you 'ave your way and buy
it."
The deal came to a conclusion, and as I was watch-
ing the progress of the packing the reluctant seller
patronised me with :
" Nice gentleman you've got, mum."
I remonstrated, " Do you not know who he is ?
That is Henry Irving, the great actor."
" Lor," she jerked as she knifed the string viciously,
" 'im an actor, and he looks so 'appy too."
Evidently her opinion of the theatre was a mean
one : and in another part of Norfolk a no more flatter-
ing view seemed to prevail, for at an inn at North
Walsham the parlourmaid, recognising her customer,
took occasion to confide to me :
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 95
" I wanted to go on the staige once, but my father
he says to me, ' Don't you dare or I'll put you in an
orphan asylum.' '
Irving was wont to declare that I made up such
stories for his entertainment, but this was a false
accusation ; everywhere we went produced some
incident fraught with fun.
We took one very long drive, when Laurence was
with us again, and we stopped at a farm-house for tea,
which the hostess prepared with such care that to
please her we pretended to enjoy ploughing through
soddened acres of empty fields interrupted by shabby
barns and soiled pigsties. As she and I went back to
the parlour Irving whispered, " I should like to give
her something; she is a good creature, some books
perhaps : find out what she would like."
I made the enquiry, and promising a signed photo-
graph, proposed, " Would you like some books ? "
She replied decisively, " No, thank you, I have one."
My thoughts flowed reverentially.
" We take to it at Christmas-time." I was the more
impressed by the certainty that book was the Bible ; I
could see it in its black binding, gold-lettered, all ten-
derly lifted from its shelf, and I was rather cast down
by her concluding :
" It is East Lynne : have you heard of it ? We read
it aloud in the winters when it is too dark to
work."
In the landau later I recounted my miscarried mis-
sion. " East Lynne, East Lynne" repeated Irving,
" strange," and he fell at once to telling me that
provincial theatres presented the play continually.
Laurence, all contempt, and knitting his brows
96 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
severely as if in self-reproach, " They ought to be
taught better/'
Laurence was very serious on the didactic duty of
the drama, and as we drove home while I watched him
slip into meditation, it seemed to me that in the future
he might grow to greater likeness to his father.
" Lovely house over there," I directed attention to
a red -roofed building in a deep cup of trees back-
grounded by the shoulder of a hill, indigo in the
twilight.
" Damp," decided Irving.
" Dull," proclaimed Laurence, and I recognised that
at least the monosyllabic method was common to
them both.
But Irving had more expansive moods, and no inci-
dent of our sojourn in Norfolk stands more distinctly
in my mental vision than his reading of Manfred during
a terrific thunderstorm.
His sitting-room at the hotel, being on a high floor,
had to endure the full force of the elements. The
windows rattled violently as if determined, come what
may, they would be released from their frames ; loud
thunder faithfully followed the lightning, which zig-
zagged across a darkling crack in a dusty mirror over
the mantelpiece beneath which gusts of smoke belched
towards the table to blur to purple the crimson flowers
in a brazen bowl ; and through the din, the snores of
Fussie, the screaming sirens and the loud moanings
of the sea came Irving 's impressive tones to thrill me
with the agonies of a soul in hell.
' Well, shall I do it ? " av/oke me from the awful
depths he had conjured. " Might be fine." He
revelled in the prospect, but never developed it.
A LEAF TORN FROM MY DAUGHTER'S AUTOGRAPH BOOK
To /ac£ ^«ge 96
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 97
Of course Irving's presence in Cromer provoked
the astute in the philanthropic direction, and the
Cottage Hospital stood forth as a plausible excuse for
a concert where the younger visitors should play
highwayman's part with the programme, which might
be relied upon to include a beautiful amateur in song,
a devoted couple in a contentious dialogue, a brilliant
boy desecrating Bach, with other items equally alarm-
ing to be suffered in all charity.
Irving recited " The Dream of Eugene Aram " and
" The Uncle/1 his favourite selections for such occa-
sions. The wealthy came from miles around, shep-
herded by Robert Fenner, doctor to the hospital, and
he and I attained some sympathy with each other
through his attitude of respect and admiration for
Irving, who gave his holiday hours so generously with
other evidence of his determination to help any helpless.
But Irving disliked a prolonged holiday, only taking
one at all through the exigencies of business or for the
good of his company. He endured inactivity bravely
for a week, but after that he counted the hours wasted
until he could get back to the theatre, and he chafed
always under any order of quiet or repose which he
knew full well he needed.
He played steadfastly the game of life, being of an
indomitable courage and zeal. When at work he never
thought of himself, giving to the best of his power to
the last inch of his ability. Of his stupendous will
power many instances have been quoted, none more
convincing than his keeping punctually a social engage-
ment after a doctor had let slip a seven-inch-long metal
instrument down his gullet to some unrecoverable
distance.
98 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Surgeons were talked of, and the offender was frantic
with remorse and the possible results of his careless-
ness. Irving had indeed to comfort him, and could
only do so by promising to see a specialist. " Later
in the day/' he pledged. " I have an appointment to
keep now," and he kept it, making light of his
mishap, which happily culminated without damage
during a violent cough. It is known that Irving. sent
the blunderer a double fee, and hoped he had not
taken the matter too seriously.
CHAPTER VIII
ABOUT HENRY IRVING
YOU don't know my boy Harry," said Irving
on the stage of the Lyceum Theatre, where
we had been bidden to supper on the first
night of Peter the Great, and I looked up from my
Gunter's chicken sandwich to see that wonderful pair
standing together, the father's hand on the son's arm,
whilst his voice held challenge, " I dare you not to
like each other."
We not alone liked each other, but I am happy in
the belief that we loved each other, and the agreement
to do so was drawn up and signed and sealed by
Dorothea, Harry Irving's wife, who has been and is
to me amongst my nearest and my dearest, whose
sympathy never fails me, whose simple sincerity
makes upright mark on whatever path she treads.
Under Harry's guidance that night I took my first
peep into the famous Beef Steak room where all the
notabilities, foreign potentates, ambassadors, poets and
prima donnas, explorers and travellers, with Prime
Ministers and Royal Princes and Princesses had at
some time gathered to endorse the far-spread tale of
Irving's hospitality.
The walls were hung with famous pictures, none as
vitally interesting to me as Whistler's gallant presen-
tation of Irving as Phillip II, which is now in the
99
too MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
possession of America, and Sargent's picture of Ellen
Terry, a red-tressed Lady Macbeth, all aglow in green
and gold and jewels, and now gracing the Tate Gallery.
Madame Vestris in a carved and gilded frame was
another gem, although the signature Thomas Lawrence
has since been questioned ; and there were dramatic
landscapes by Frank Miles, and scenes in Venice by
Cattermole, and a dozen more giving testimony to the
labour of well-known hands. I investigated with con-
siderable respect twelve feet of hand-woven linen
thickly embroidered in golden squares which enclosed
the name of every character Irving had enacted ; this
had been used as a cloth at banquets when the number
of guests spread to the stage, and I reflected upon the
love, industry and skill which had gone to its making.
Peter the Great had only a sentimental success, its
" takings ," to use the language of the box office, did
not total within thousands of the cost of its splendid
production, and in spite of the facts that Queen
Alexandra commanded a special performance, and an
acre of print hailed its historical and literary value, it
was allowed but a short period to fret its hour upon
the boards.
Only a full house satisfied Irving, who, for Laurence's
sake, was bitterly disappointed, even angry, that the
play did not attain wide popularity.
" Like it ? Yes, they like it, but they don't come,"
he would say, and an old programme was reinstated
to a better record whilst waiting for The Medicine Man,
which was the joint work of H. D. Traill and Robert
Hichens, the latter telling me in confidence during
rehearsals, " All the good there is in it Irving put
there."
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 101
When in town Irving took few hours away from his
theatre, but a very beautiful morning might tempt
him to a drive to Hampstead Heath, a favourite spot
of his when the hawthorn was in bloom, and here we
were once followed by two inquisitive little boys,
endeavouring to recall his face and where they had
seen him.
" I know, Jim," said the smaller triumphantly.
" He's the bounder what plays The Bells " : not quite
an adequate description, but Irving enjoyed it im-
mensely.
We paid frequent visits to my daughter at school
near town, and here took place the rare ceremony of
christening a recently purchased pig, Irving standing
godfather.
" Handsome, " he said, peering over into the sty.
" Not so 'andsome as you, Sir 'enry," ventured an
obsequious stockman.
:< I suppose not," he chuckled, and all regardless of
the proprieties due to the sex of a pig, he gave the
animal the name of Portia. It is to be hoped that he
grew to play finely his different parts as ham, pork and
bacon.
We were driving through Richmond Park on one
occasion when the coachman turned on his seat to
point with his whip at antlers crouching in a little
herd in the distance.
" Deer, Sir Henry."
" I suppose so," was vouchsafed.
That coachman was a queer character in the
employment of a near livery stable, and not the sole
property of Irving, who kept no carriage of his own.
He would invariably take upon himself to act as host
102 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
in any country we were passing through ; he would
introduce Irving to the sheep, the rabbits, the bridges,
the goats and the ponds. I fancy his name was Harris,
an unimportant item, but I met him by chance long
afterwards, and asked whether he would take me out
to a dinner-party ; he touched his hat with solemnity,
saying :
:< I shouldn't like to be driving you now, Mum, I've
got a regular job with an undertaker."
Unless a social claim persisted, or the weather
proved too abominable to be faced, Irving and I drove
together every Sunday either to Harrow or to Rich-
mond, to Epping Forest, to Norwood, or to Barnet,
and occasionally in the spring-time Harry would
accompany us. After the initial ceremony, seldom
omitted by these two, of stigmatising critics as " a
hard-boiled lot," they agreed to find their fair treat-
ment difficult, because an expressed distrust would
condemn the artist as suffering from well-merited
rebuke, and enthusiasm for their work in their presence
would be open to suspicion of trying to beguile the
judge and corrupt the executioner.
This being settled, father and son would sit opposite
to each other, Harry upright, Irving deep down in the
corner of the carriage, and become absorbed in tales
of awful crimes, the most ingenious murder was
supremely to their taste, the bloodier the better, the
most artful and deliberate the best, the technique of
the affair being the supreme point for argument.
Harry listened while Irving told of the old Thurtell
and Weare case, with pork chops for supper while the
poor corpse was chivied from pond to sack and sack
to chaise ; and Harry in his turn enchanted his father
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 103
with the psychology of Charles Peace, commenting with
considerable ability upon the value of the procedure
of French law, and remarking how strange it was in
the histories of all crimes to find that no villain was
without a feminine companion, who loved him very
dearly despite or because of his unmitigated brutality.
Both men looked whimsically to me for some ex-
planation not forthcoming, but I quoted :
" She was a harlot and he was a thief,
But they loved each other beyond belief."
" Women do not love men for what they are, but
for what they think they are or hope they may become
to them exclusively. We make and fit your haloes," I
laughed.
That murder held irresistible attraction for Irving
was often proved in his work, but he would invest the
most abominable wretch with some tender touch of
redemption. " Shy lock " he declared to be " the only
gentleman in the Merchant of Venice" and by accen-
tuating the pathos of his loneliness he persuaded us to
believe him.
Mathias in The Bells was the kindest of fathers, the
most benevolent of citizens ; the dastardly Dubosc was
drink-sodden and hunger-driven to his crimes ; Mac-
beth was a visionary and never an assassin, and when
Irving recited " The Dream of Eugene Aram " he
artfully contrived by the misery he dealt him to get
our sympathy for the haunted schoolmaster.
But I do not dwell upon Irving's subtle acting,
which was always magnetic and earned universal
acknowledgment, his work and his genius are for others
to acclaim. I felt ever when listening to him, on or
104 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
off the boards, his morally elevating tendency, his pos-
session of the highest ideals, and the true aestheticism
which was his with an artistic intellectual completeness.
He had in his desk a modern play on murder, and
he often showed some desire to enact the hero, who
had been falsely imprisoned as a murderer in the first
act, and was liberated to become one in the following
act, when he discovered his wife had been driven by
hunger into the hands of a " bully," threatening the
happiness of his daughter, and driving his son into
bright red Socialism.
I was much in favour of this when he read it to me,
and regretted his unalterable decision that he was too
old to present such sordid pictures. He inclined then
exclusively to sweetness and to light.
My mother and my family grew devoted to Irving,
never unmindful of the honour he did us by his friend-
ship, and I recall Julia's telegram after our first meeting
in Cromer : " Grapple him to your soul with hooks
of steel." But such violent counsel was scarcely due,
for his intimacy with us was so soon established that
he would come in at odd hours and all unexpected,
would occasionally find an incongruous party as-
sembled. On one merry morning in May there was a
group of gossiping women present whilst he and my
mother sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, her gold-
rimmed spectacles pushed up on to her forehead,
whilst his pince-nez had slipped half-way down his
nose. The room hummed with discussion on the
peccadilloes of a well-born girl, who had been in-
discreet in her outgoings and homecomings, in her
letters and in her boon companions.
" What do you think about her, Sir Henry ? " said
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 105
my mother, looking over her glasses which she held
an inch away from her eyes.
Irving pressed the steel arch of his firmly across the
bridge of his nose, and made monumental reply.
" Strumpet, madam. "
James was ever prone to wonder how Irving could
endure my flippancy, but on the strength of that belief
he ventured to explain to him that his writing for the
stage held no other purpose than to fill his pockets.
Irving remonstrated with him, and assured him of his
ability to achieve something better, if yet upon the
same lines he pursued.
" No, no," said James. " I am not rich enough to
make experiments," and he added with a twinkle,
' You see, Sir Henry, Fm out for the box office and
you for a tomb in Westminster Abbey."
Irving shook his head indulgently, whilst deciding :
* There will be nothing of the sort this century, no
actor will be buried in Westminster Abbey."
This was an instance when his gift of prophecy
failed, but nevertheless he possessed one, and a care-
fully concealed ability to sum up people and circum-
stances at their proper value, this power growing more
pronounced as he became older.
A devoted mother with an apparently devoted son
brought my comment on the rarity and beauty of such
perfect companionship in their relations.
Shrewdly he looked at them whilst he pronounced,
' That boy will have her eyeballs " — and sure enough
he did.
Again, when he attended, at the request of Tree, one
of the first meetings held to discuss the National fund
for the National Theatre.
106 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
" Um, um, um, very good, I will go, do what I can,
but there would be a better chance for a National
Music Hall and a statue of George Edwardes in the
lobby. " And this opinion must have been uttered
some eighteen years ago or even more.
Irving would often say that life had taught him
patience, but it was not true, he never had any, either
to listen to counsel or to change any determination he
made ; there was no power behind his throne ; he
occupied it and surrounded it himself.
" Let there be Coriolanus, and there was Corio-
lanus" although many argued it not to the public
taste. " Let there be Dante, and there was Dante"
was a plan he refused to alter under much persuasion
and a mountain of difficulties which might have made
Hannibal pause. For years he had desired a play on
Dante, had asked Tennyson to do one for him, but
Tennyson had refused, making answer :
" It wants a Dante to write it," which impressed
Irving very much, but did not move his resolution.
He was, however, not unconscious of his failures,
nor unmindful of the conduct of his associates, and
he had always a keen sense of proportion, never being
overwhelmed by a commendation nor for that matter
by a criticism, appraising both with equal acumen.
After the most thunderous applause had sounded and
echoed and resounded again through the theatre and
for fifteen times he had appeared before the curtain
to reply by reverential bow, kiss of hand, and his
modest tag, " I am your loving and your grateful
servant," he might be seen sitting in his chair calmly
creaming the blue from his face, and judging, " Too
much of it, too much of it."
DRAWING, BY PAUL RENOUARD, OF SIR HENRY IRVING
IN HIS DRESSING-ROOM AT THE LYCEUM
Reproduced by gracious permission of its owner, Mrs. Bram Stoker.
To face page 106
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 107
To that dressing-room difficult of access under the
guardianship of the faithful Walter, an American lady
of some thirty summers pushed her way in the com-
pany of a girl of twenty.
Irving rose to greet them with evident surprise that
she should have thus dared, when she advanced as
even the best Americans will, with the autobiographical
note in her speech.
" My ! Sir Henry, I have got such a toothache."
Irving looked at her with amazement, and smoothing
his chin with his hand, a common custom of his, he
turned to the girl, cool mischief in his eyes :
" Your daughter, madam ? " knowing full well that
their ages precluded any 9 such possibility and being
anxious somehow to bring discomfiture to the ego-
tistical intruder.
Irving had few idle evenings except during the earlier
rehearsals of a new play or of a time-honoured revival ;
but one memorable night when I had persuaded him
to take me to witness The Cat and the Cherub, and we
were sitting in the box waiting for the curtain to go
up on the succeeding farce, a commissionaire came in
with a note and waited as if for an answer.
* That's all right, my boy," and the ever-ready
five shillings was given into his hand.
But Irving put the letter into his pocket unopened,
and the man stood by signalling to me that the missive
was important.
" Why don't you look at it ? " I asked.
" I never open letters in public."
The commissionaire whispered, " There is bad
news, mum, make him read it."
And bad news it was indeed, sent him by one of the
io8 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
many devoted who had taken some trouble to find the
whereabouts of Irving so that he would get no shock
when he heard the cry in the streets, " Murder of
William Terriss ! "
" Poor chap ! Poor chap ! >: Irving was deeply
distressed. Terriss had acted with him for years, he
had always been fond of him, considered him the ideal
hero of romance, declared he looked it as few others
could, and " Poor chap, poor chap " was reiterated
again and again whilst we pretended to eat our supper.
And the cry found echo in my heart, for I was a
great admirer of Terriss, meeting him often when he
was in pursuit of no other calling than his cards at
poker after a midday breakfast provided by the
Lumleys ; and I pause to pay Gertie Lumley tribute
as one of those rare women whose car is always going
the way her friends want to go, whose hand is ever
ready to help them into it.
Most characteristic of Irving were his actions during
the days which followed the murder of William
Terriss.
He was commanded to bear the widow the Royal
message of condolence from Queen Victoria, and he
performed this office promptly with all respect and
true sympathy ; but on the day of the funeral he
yielded to an impulse to convey to the graveside
Jessie Milward, who had been, poor girl, the comrade
of William Terriss, and the leading lady in the drama
proceeding, when he was assassinated. Here Irving
was Christ, protector of the weak, a shelter against
slander, a solace for the sorrow-stricken, a stand-by
for an afflicted people.
There was not a member in the theatrical world in
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 109
the crowd which followed the murdered man to his
last resting-place who did not fall in worshipful
admiration of Irving when they noted the tenderness
which went to his shepherding. No one but Irving
could have done this, and no less typical of him was
his assertion that the assassin would not be hanged.
' They will find some excuse to get him off," he
would say, " mad or something. Terriss was an actor,
his murderer will not be executed. "
Irving played a prodigious part in social life, giving
many entertainments of diplomatic significance, and
one of these went to the fitting welcome for the Indian
guests at the time of the Coronation. The Lyceum
Theatre presented a gorgeous appearance, with scarlet
the prevailing colour, and masses of flowers flanking
the steps to the stage, the most conspicuous feature
being an enormous Union Jack formed of hundreds of
red, white and blue lights, stretching across the front
of the dress circle, while crimson velvet hung at the
back and huge palms entwined their pointed leaves to
cover the footlights. It was a wonderful sight, and
Irving, standing with a son on either side of him, and
Lord Aberdeen and Richard Seddon, the Premier of
New Zealand, in the rear, played the gracious host as
only he could, to a procession of highnesses from all
parts of the East wearing their native garb and
jewelled turbans of blazing magnificence.
But what struck me more than any pomp and cir-
cumstance there, was the attention Irving contrived to
pay to the nobodies, his affectionate greeting to his
old friends, and his concern for their refreshment and
well-being. One little man with whom he had been
associated in his short commercial days was signalled
no MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
out for special courtesy, and it is rather sad to chronicle
that in the after years when that little man came to die
he left a proviso in his Will that none should inherit
if in any way connected with the stage. Irving laughed
at that, and ejaculated, " Silly fellow ! " but he felt
injured and insulted all the same.
Many hours of Irving's existence in town were
occupied in unveiling monuments, presiding or being
honourably received at important banquets, sub-
mitting to photographers for whom he had no great
regard, and visiting Toole, for whom he had an un-
alterable affection. I, who did not meet Toole until
he was a decrepit, inarticulate invalid, found it difficult
to understand the love between these two. And what
a miserable meeting it was, saved only from disaster
by Harry's presence. Harry talked to his father
whilst I, endeavouring to bring myself to some com-
prehension of Toole 's mental condition, fell to utter
grief when I showed him a little gold locket containing
Irving's portrait, which had been sent to me during
a trip in America. Unfortunately Irving had given
Toole an exactly similar trinket, and the poor old
fellow burst into tears of distress. We had great diffi-
culty in soothing him ; he regarded me so suspiciously
as his rival that Harry could only overcome the awk-
wardness of the situation by suggesting that I looked
tired and he would take me home ; and we left Toole
growing happy with Irving's arm around his shoulders.
But Toole never wanted to see me again ; although I
tried to coax him with flowers and a privately taken
portrait of Irving, he rejected all my advances.
It satisfied my sense of the importance of dress
when I brought the topic to Irving's notice, encouraged
ABOUT HENRY IRVING in
by the unimpeachable punctiliousness and neatness of
his own attire. He never failed to wear elegantly the
correct costume at the correct time, his frock-coat, his
grey tweed clothes were of exactly the length to suit
his long spare outlines, the neckties of sympathetic
character, and on all his coats he adopted those close-
fitting sleeves which attracted my notice the first time
I saw him. His hats told their own story, the hard
high-crowned felt was decorous even when tilted
slightly over to the right eyebrow, his top-hat reflected
in its brilliant surface and scarcely curved brim a whole
century of dignified dandyism, and the soft drab felt
of his holiday times was a rascal with a half-inch
square deliberately jagged away for ventilation. It
must be related that Irving did not have much respect
for his own jewellery, although he was a great admirer
of Guiliano, and his favourite wedding presents were
of enamel achieved by this artist, or a close cluster of
garnets from the same source.
Yet he would permit the small circlet of diamonds
he wore on his little finger to suffer from the loss of a
stone or even two, and his evening watch-chain of
enamel and pearls I have known as a cripple tied
together with string. Although faithfully making his
jewelled offerings to brides, he never attended a wed-
ding, too sadly conscious of the sorry ending of his
own.
Of theatrical costume Irving once said to me, " You
may take it as a general rule that whatever is right,
looks right ; and it is obvious you would not choose
sky-blue and silver for a murderer, nor black for
Ophelia, nor present Hamlet in green silk, nor Lady
Macbeth in pink satin. " He observed dress off the
ii2 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
stage, had strict rules of his own on its appropriateness
to place and person, and he suspected all new fashions
of being silly.
When Irving was at work upon a play he devoted
himself to the study of any period he would illustrate,
he would pore over huge books of costume and read
all available histories and biographies to attain the
desired atmosphere. His dress for Dante gave tre-
mendous anxiety because of the difficulty of obtaining
the brown and travel-stained purple he was convinced
would be most appropriate, and hopefully I spent a
few days in the search, even securing fabric and a doll
as model to arrange the drapery and cowl. Irving
expressed himself delighted with the result, and
decided as surreptitiously as he could to use some-
thing totally different.
Excepting to suit his purpose, he was on the whole
reluctant to investigate any new author, although
Laurence successfully urged him to a study of all the
most morbid Russians ; he would turn with greater
pleasure to his heavy old volumes, or to Dickens, or to
Shakespeare, or to biographies, and he had tremendous
consignments of daily newspapers, of magazines,
reviews, detective stories and reports of criminal
trials and modern tragedies. I cajoled him once into
reading Oscar Wilde's play, The Duchess of Padua.
" Oscar," I suggested, " had certainly read the
Merchant of Venice." Significantly he responded,
" I expect so, and thought little of it."
I only heard one dissentient voice to the general
verdict of appreciation of Irving 's physical charms,
and this came from a hospital nurse, promptly deported
for incompatibility.
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 113
She stood opposite a portrait of him on my table,
commenting, " I am told he is a hard, cruel man, and
he looks it."
Perhaps she would have mitigated the decision if
she had read the inscription from Othello : " Hail to
thee, lady, and the grace of heaven before, behind thee
and on every hand enwheel thee round. " Some
pleasant feeling at least went to that dedication.
CHAPTER IX
ABOUT HENRY IRVING
A PER an illness with septic symptoms it was
considered advisable that Irving should move
from his eyrie in Grafton Street to a flat in
Stratton Street, and the accumulations of years were
dug out to the discovery of a surplus of treasures im-
possible to be contained comfortably in less space than
was afforded by the two suites Irving had occupied
so long.
Regretfully he decided to part with some of his books
and a few pictures, and it was then I received thank-
fully a beautiful pastel-portrait by John McClure
Hamilton which had aroused much admiration in
various exhibitions here and in America. Now, in
mellow grey perfection with tossed locks above pent
eyebrows and a forehead of rarely faithful modelling,
this excellent presentment of Irving looks down upon
me from a wall of my favourite sitting-room.
Shifting his possessions proved a terribly arduous
business, although there were three willing slaves
requisitioned to the task. Irving, having ordained
that crimson was to be the dominant note of his new
dwelling, and this being faithfully applied to the walls
of the spacious entrance, to the corridor, and to
the carpet, he cared about no other details than
the righteous bestowal of Whistler's and Sargent's
114
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 115
pictures and the proper fittings for his innumerable
bookshelves.
He was an unconscious hindrance to active advance,
for he would wander towards a pile of volumes in the
corner, and extracting one, would ignore the prevailing
chaos, pushing all intruding parcels on to the floor
while he sat at the far end of the super-sized sofa and
read, his long finger marking his place when he looked
up sharply resentful should an unpacker venture to
dump to his disturbance, or a carpenter presume to
hammer a nail.
" No knocking ; I can't have that knocking."
Knocking was his bugbear, and the manager of every
hotel where he visited was warned of this by the de-
voted custodian dresser-valet Walter. Disregarding the
chance that such noise might proceed from a necessary
mending of a lift, or the erection of some adjacent
building which was contracted to finish at a certain
time, Walter would ordain :
" No knocking, he can't bear knocking," and until
Irving was out of his room in the mornings no knocking
took place.
How the magic was worked it is not difficult to guess,
but no knocking was the order, and in fixing up his
apartments we had to wait to hang the pictures and
establish the bookcases until Irving had gone down to
the theatre.
When completed the flat had a lordly air, the crimson
walls interrupted by a stained-glass window with a
sill bearing fine bronzes amid vases of majolica, while
the soft pink drawing-room was definitely French in
the pattern of its brocade and its carved gilt frames,
and the large dining-room, endowed with magnificent
n6 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
specimens of blue and gold Chinese embroidery, con-
tained amongst its straight close rows of pictures a
fine study by Clint of the weird, wild face of Edmund
Kean, always the prominent " lead " in Irving's his-
trionic heroes.
He stood gazing at it to deplore that the actor is
bound to get less than justice from a generation who
never saw him, that it is his fate to be judged by echoes
which are altogether delusive when he has passed out
of immediate ken, and he added reflectively, " Some
fifty years hence some old fool will be saying, there
never was an actor like Irving."
He strolled then deliberately to the door to call
" Walter " with that deep note on the first syllable
peculiar to him, and a whispered instruction brought
forward a lace collar, which Kean had worn in Hamlet,
and an old lady had sent with a letter inscribed,
" Bought in London with the Hamlet dress about the
year 1835.;'
* Wear it, you wear it," Irving said in full flattery
of my respect for the traditions of the stage, yet not
suspecting I should deem such conduct sacrilege.
One of our shorter expeditions during that summer
had been to Stratford-on-Avon after I had been
discovered sadly wanting in the experience.
It is strange to recall the vague discontent in my
first impression of this shrine of a million pilgrims.
I understood and appreciated the reverent labour
which had gone to its complete equipment, its meti-
culous arrangement of all available documents, pic-
tures, deeds and letters, but the very perfection of
their orderliness banished all glamour, my mind re-
fused to reconstruct the period, and while I could
[SKETCH OF EDMUND KEAN AS "HAMLET," BY CLINT
Reproduced by gracious permission of its owner, Mrs. Bratn Stoker
To face page 116
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 117
grasp the hands of the trustees realising the work they
had so admirably accomplished, I could not sense the
inspiration, never the time and place and the loved one
altogether.
We followed the accepted rules but omitting to
purchase oddments achieved from that amazing old
mulberry tree, which flourishes to multiplication as
prodigious as King Charles' oak, and the beds occupied
for one night by Queen Elizabeth. We refused to
enjoy " a back view of Miss Corelli's stables," but we
visited the birth-house, which has some fragrance in
its bareness, gazed at the Memorial Garden of Shake-
speare's flowers plucking their significance of the
immediate present, and driving duly to Ann Hathaway 's
Cottage, where doubt of the identity of the settle
whereon the divine William had sat to woo the not
quite divine Arm, seemed of small import.
Emotion was only within the church, and the
approach-way was beset with the tread of many foot-
steps, while the air echoed harsh tones twanging facts
from guide-books. How wonderful it might have
been to kneel alone in the twilight before the bust in
the niche near the chancel where the remains are
buried beneath that epitaph of menace which has
preserved them to eternal rest.
A-flutter with birds were the elms to the banks of
the gently flowing Avon, but the little black steamers
puffed William Shakespeare, Ltd., four-fifths of the
shares allotted to the United States with Washington
Irving in the chair.
I do not know what I wanted, but white palfreys
went to it mounted by velvet-clad riders.
" Might have an Armada in the Avon with
n8 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Mr. Parker as an admiral in command," I was
chaffed.
Over the teacups in the famous Red Horse Inn it
was something to escape the tale of Sir Thomas Lucy
and deer poaching in his park, since this was inevit-
able in the library where the picture of magistrate
and marauder hangs.
Now I grasp as I write the secret of my dissatisfac-
tion. It was encouraged in that library catalogue,
which so honourably sets forth " artist unknown,"
" likeness in doubt," " attributed to," " date unfixed,"
" probably a portrait " ; nothing before the eighteenth
century seeming absolutely certain. Stratford was a
mausoleum I mistrusted. Not one actuality of old
came to life. The doors of the tombs remained
closed, the spirit within and never without.
But the afternoon had held some instruction in the
fatigue which may wait upon fame, in the penalty
which has to be paid for greatness.
Irving adored Americans and indeed America, never
failing in grateful acknowledgment of their deep
affection for him, always regarding their troubles as
his own, so that no news of disaster by earthquake,
flood or war ever came from the other side without
exciting his distress with a desire to enrol himself
amongst the active sympathisers.
Crowds of Americans ran after him that day, twenty
times or more he was stopped for an immediate grant
of his autograph ; books attached to pencils were thrust
upon him at every corner, even at the railway station
after we were entrained and waiting to start away.
One little boy, fully equipped for his job, ran panting
to the carriage door.
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 119
" I say, ss-ir, ww-ill you sign here ? father is coming
along, but he does not run as fast as me ; he ssays he
wwants your autograph — because " — and here a very
bad stammer impeded all utterance — " he's so often —
sso often heard you pr-each."
Irving smiled amiably upon everybody, his hat was
scarcely upon his head for two consecutive moments,
whilst I was wondering with unjustifiable cynicism
how much about Shakespeare, except as a respectable
tradition or as a commercial proposition to bring grist
to the town mill, did all these hectic hurrying people
know or mind.
Back to me came the tale of the old labpurer who
had passed his life showing visitors the way to the
various places of interest.
" Who was this Shakespeare ? " had been answered
by a prolonged scratch of the head and a dubious, " I
doan't know 'zactly, but I believe he writ the boible."
" You did not care much about it," Irving said when
we were all dining at Leamington that evening.
" You'll like Kenilworth Castle better," he prophesied
justly when the next day found us in front of that
vacant old shell which it seemed easy to people with
gallants and turnkeys with Amy Robsart in distress
with the Earl of Leicester, and all the brave crew of
them who did such dastardly hideous deeds with such
elegant determined grace. Here I forgave freely the
absence of desire to re-establish anything, smiling in-
dulgently even upon the empty paper bags in gay flight
round the ruins and exuding the full flavour of the
week's picnics.
We paid a short visit to Warwick to note the archi-
tectural charm of the old alms-houses and the fine
120 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
detachment of the castle where the peacocks were
braying with proud discordance. A little stationer's
shop yielded a quaint picture of this worked in fine
black silk, and achieving remarkably the effect of
etching in its slender threads against a faintly dis-
coloured sky. This was dated 1780, when the trees
were in their first youth and a triple-arched bridge was
in full sight with the round battlemented towers where
the narrow slits and square windows were revealed
clearly without shelter of green.
But for the more prolonged holiday, Irving preferred
a coast, and if no time availed to get to his most dearly
beloved Cornwall he would accept a compromise of
the North of Devon, or of the East up Norfolk way ;
and once in search of the bracing virtue we pitched
our tents at Felixstowe.
The departure from Liverpool Street Station was
impressive to the nth degree with Irving, preceded
up the platform by a station-master, bareheaded, and
two porters to lead the convoy, which included me,
my daughter, her companion, a maid, and Walter the
indispensable.
" Might be a touring company, " mused Irving as
he stood for a moment in survey of the trunks and the
packages overlooked by his younger secretary and the
baggage-man from the theatre.
Irving as a family man was an incongruity : solitude
suited him, and not one of those silly tales of his sad
loneliness after the death of his dog, or his deep-seated
sorrow at the loss of his scenery by fire, or the desolate
melancholy which followed his serious illness was ever
justified by fact. He was always the courageous
philosopher, a careless, trusting Bohemian shirking the
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 121
financial review. He was nevertheless shrewd enough
to necessity, and astute to value men and matters ;
under no circumstances was he a fool or a weakling.
He lived by himself because he liked to do so, and alone
he fought for himself and his calling ; he never was
an object for pity or for commiseration, he had every-
thing material he needed, and he failed only for a short
time in the potential possession of the benefits he would
so happily dispense at all times and seasons.
:< I am not here to collect money/' he would say,
should I dare to urge investigation of some claim to
his charity, and it may be reckoned as truth that when
he recaptured his fortune no week elapsed without
fifty pounds being distributed amongst the needy.
It always seemed to me that Irving did nothing
whatever to secure extra-special notice or attention,
and yet his personality compelled both to a somewhat
overwhelming point. Wherever we wandered, even
to the smallest village where the fruit-pickers or the
stone-breakers would cheer him, it was the same story
of recognition and acclamation, and he would modestly
explain this with, " Well, there are a great many
illustrated papers, and other people cut their hair."
At first I found such public acknowledgment rather
embarrassing, royalty could not have been more re-
spectfully escorted or more gladly greeted, and as
I had not been in the habit of receiving bouquets with
a curtsey, I shuffled rather shyly at their presentation
with a little speech included.
Irving exhibited a splendid composure under the
greatest provocation. He took exactly the right atti-
tude, whether planting a tree for an hotel-keeper or
accepting an old magazine at the hands of a waiter, or
122 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
a bunch of field flowers from a baby ; I have even seen
him endure unmoved a couple of Italian ladies who
flung themselves at his feet and kissed his hand whilst
crying, " Maestro, Maestro. " His equanimity was by
no means upset. He never lacked dignity allied to
charm and sympathy.
The air of Felixstowe being duly commended and the
shipping to Harwich investigated through the willing
mouths of a dozen officials, the place was found to be
possessed of only one good drive, which involved a
carriage being ferried across a broad river, where the
flat surrounding country declared itself a close relation
to Holland.
After having sampled this two or three times Felix-
stowe was deserted in favour of Lowestoft, and this
again abandoned for Buxton, with trains and horses
to readiness as might please.
Buxton was bracing enough to satisfy the sovereign
mover of our driving destinies, but it yielded for him
the wrong sort of recreation ; he liked to sit in con-
templation of mountains or strange birds or rocks and
blue and green tempestuous seas.
His day's routine would be letters till twelve, walk
till luncheon prolonged to a rest, and four hours'
driving before dinner-time, such drives to be amidst
rough scenery for choice. The hills and the streams
of Derbyshire supplied very well the need of variety,
but during that year Irving was especially restless, and
the set civilisation of Buxton with hydropathic com-
plexion did not suit his mood.
During our sojourn here as elsewhere the travelling
entertainers came, and although Irving never went
down to hear their programme, he would always en-
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 123
courage them by " a little cheque " and a kindly letter
of greeting.
One night an offence brought some blame as well as
the little cheque, for a fortune-teller plying his pro-
fession in the crowded hall had predicted evil to a
young girl.
" Soon a wife and soon a widow " had been pro-
phesied, and Irving took special opportunity to
reprimand gently with " All wrong, all wrong, my
boy, don't do it again."
It is quite indisputable that Irving considered him-
self the father of his people, and his people included
every artist in public amusement ; and all alike on the
road would get from him some special welcome, a
caravan of gipsies being hailed with tremendous
joy-
it was at Buxton we went to hear Benson's Company
play in Macbeth, and Irving acceded to a request to
come behind the scenes and visit the famous actor-
manager.
" What did you say to Benson ? " I asked inquisi-
tively when he returned to the box, for the plaudits of
one artist of another must necessarily be difficult to
express with an absolute sincerity, unless the talented
should be recognising the man of genius.
" What did Benson say ? " I demanded.
1 Very good, very good, we talked about cricket and
the difficulties of transporting heavy productions. "
Sydney Holland, now Lord Knutsford, was in resi-
dence at the hotel ; Sir Alfred Cooper, suffering from
his first attack of arthritis, arrived there for the benefit
of the waters, and Lord Farquhar came in possession
of a fine motor-car and endeavoured to persuade
124 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Irving to give up his drives and take to the swifter
method.
" No, no," he demurred, " never."
He liked the sound of the horses' hoofs and the
chance of leisurely enjoyment of the scenery. By the
uninitiated man then a motor was regarded as an
obstructionist, indicted as a hog, and found guilty of
obscuring the vivid green of the trees, and making the
milestones seem as a vast graveyard.
There was much satisfaction to be gained from the
views in the country surrounding Buxton, although
stone walls are poor substitutes for green hedges in a
landscape, and some argument may ensue from a sign-
post which displays a female without a head to explain
her title— " The Silent Woman."'
Dovedale was approved amongst resting-places, but
Irving could not be persuaded to mount a donkey and
go down to the valley, the earnest photographer for-
bade. We dawdled at Castleton, where the tale of the
ringing curfew bell lent charm with a ropewalk, and
some pitch-dark caves centred by a pool of gloom to
contrast with the brilliant sunshine of our emerging.
Haddon Hall did not escape attention, and the
hanging tapestries gave to me evidence of remarkable
skill in their mending, whilst no conjuror was needed
to call to vision a plumed Dorothy Vernon departing
through the wide door, where, by the way, Irving stood
to utter with grim humour :
" Hooked," in comment on an eager mother arming
her daughter's dangler round the garden.
After we left Buxton " the cavalcade," as Irving used
to call it, departed for Wales ; the environment of the
grey-blue hills, where long-maned ponies ran up and
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 125
down, and queer-shaped cattle gazed amidst trickling
streams, suited well his grey-clad figure, his deliberate
movements, the gentle grace which was ever his.
No one could so stamp with elegance the merest
commonplace of taking a cigar from a case, clipping it
to a bitter end, and piercing it slowly before exhaling
a first puff with a bland smile of ineffable content.
Whether due to the long-tailed black-faced sheep,
or to the ponies, or to the primitive beauty of Conway
Castle, or the David Cox signpost at an inn in Bettws-
y-coed, Wales was a complete success. But Irving
cavilled at being cheered up and down Snowdon, even
with the comic relief present of an enthusiastic lady
whose muslin roses had under the influence of the
mountain mist dissolved to splash her nose and chin
with splendid purple patches.
All the people in the laden coaches insisted upon
yielding Irving tribute, an incident to evoke some
surprise and sport taking place at Llanrwst when,
passing a crowd assembled round the Law Court, we
came upon a Cheap Jack screaming of his wares in
voluble Welsh.
No sooner had the clatter of our horses on the
stones interrupted his harangue than he waved his
hands, dashed down the steps shouting, " Gawd
blimey, it's Henry Irving " with the best quality of
Cockney accent that ever grew to perfection in the
Whitechapel Road.
Here again I was inspired to admiration at the right
reception of the greeting, for of course the carriage
was stopped, the crowd gathered round it, and the hand
of the descended orator was grasped with :
" How are you, my boy ; so you come from
126 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
London ? " and much enquiry took place as to the
financial success of the present hawking enterprise and
just a little added to speed this on the way, and all done
with such simplicity and acute perception of what
might be acceptable.
Irving loved the people, that was why he was able
to understand them, for although he attended punc-
tually at Royal garden parties, gratefully received
Royal enquiries and mandates to Royal performances,
in his heart he had little ambition to be hail-fellow-
well-met with sovereigns and nobles. But he never
failed to show his pleasure for the privileges he took,
regarding these obstinately as being as much in acknow-
ledgment of his profession as in personal honour.
Just before the time when King Edward's coronation
was due we drove together through St. James' Street,
gay with pillars encircled with laurels and flowers
crowned with flaming lights. I can see him so well
viewing the excellent effect with satisfied grunts whilst
rising from his seat and calling to the coachman :
" Go down to the East End, let us see what they are
doing there."
Nothing delighted him more than to be in the thick
of the masses, such taste leading him even to a Bank
Holiday on Yarmouth sands, and an infallible rule of
attending any country fair within his reach.
That the populace loved him no less there was ample
proof, none to me more touching than was evinced by
an old half -blind upholsteress who had been re-covering
some of his cushions and had come to me in all
humility to ask if she might keep one of the old cases
upon which, as she expressed it, " his noble head had
rested."
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 127
In the later years when Lena Ashwell inaugurated
the Three Arts Club and gave me the chance I gladly
took to furnish the Henry Irving room there, I offered
the sewing of the curtains to that same old woman
whose total income then I learnt to be seven shillings a
week. She begged me with tears in her eyes not to
make her take payment for anything which was dedi-
cated " to the memory of that dear Henry Irving."
CHAPTER X
ABOUT HENRY IRVING
THE morning papers announced, " Collapse of
Sir Henry Irving whilst playing at Wolver*
hampton," and we waited anxiously all
through the dreary day for further detailed news and
the permission to go up and see him.
The greeting was typical from the gaunt Jaeger-clad
figure sitting up with a glass of champagne in his
hand.
" We are just drinking your health/' and not a word
to follow about his own, which was obviously of more
importance. I found a curious scene at the hotel,
unlike any I had ever witnessed, as if some great king
were laid by and his ministers of state in watchful
attendance. There were Irving in bed and a hospital
nurse hovering round him but not allowed to assist
him actively, for while Irving respected nurses deeply,
and did not refuse to engage them if forced to do so,
he made rare use of them, always manoeuvring to be
rid of them, and turning for all his creature comforts
to the faithful ever-present Walter.
Whispering messengers moved in and out of an
ante-chamber filled with flowers, while a couple of
Royal messages and a foot high of telegrams fluttered
on the dressing-table, and Bram Stoker, with H. J.
Loveday, Irving 's most assiduous lieutenants, were
128
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 129
endeavouring to reply to these, Irving continually
editing their efforts with " Very good, but I should not
say that."
I was delighted of course to learn from the waiter
that three other ladies had come from different parts
of England to request that they might look after
Sir Henry, who had answered politely with gratitude
and a hope to see them " some other time."
After much diplomacy and dodging, the doctor and
I met on the evening of my appearance which he at
first resented then amiably forgave, even urging me
to remain longer because " I understand when you
leave others will come, and he must be kept quiet."
However, all went slowly well, and Irving and I met
later at Torquay, advised for its mild atmosphere, but
with all its smug countenance we found every corner
beset by a different quality of cold wind, and knew
there were other places in the South of England
possessed of a far balmier beneficence.
Devonshire and Cornwall we had visited previously
at different times, beginning one trip at Lynton to
finish it at Penzance and Land's End, another at
Falmouth, proceeding to Padstow, and diverging to
Bude and every other interesting place possible on the
way, permitting horses and trains with preceding
servants to evoke the indispensable comfort of our
habit.
Scenery to be served with luxury was now the
obeyed mandate, and the super- tripper not specially
required on the programme.
But we encountered an overcrowded Ilfracombe,
where walking was altogether prohibitive to Irving, for
he was followed around as if he had been a circus, and
1 30 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
comment with close scrutiny pursued him outside all
limit of pleasant leisure.
" You must let us look at him too," shouted a woman
at me after she had noted my scowl when she hustled
him against the window of a shop.
There were better chances of quiet down at Tintagel,
where we stayed once or twice, and he enjoyed a huge
sitting-room with a fine view of rugged rocks against
which the multi-coloured white-frilled waves crept and
dashed their black impression.
Upon his balcony the large telescope of his constant
companionship was set to obtain glimpses at the passing
ships, not conspicuously many, and always con-
spicuously distant.
However, it revealed one morning beside the green-
roofed cave, dedicated to the memory of Merlin, nurse
of Arthur, the tall figure of a bather waving a panama
hat in joyous recognition of " The Chief." This was
Margaret Halstan, with many Shakespearean heroines
to her histrionic name, an ardent worshipper and a
beautiful girl. What could be better ? I thought as I
watched her all joy and excitement when she came up
the steps to know that she was under the same roof as
Irving.
Grimly battlemented in careful imitation of bygone
days if not actually persuasive of tradition, King
Arthur's Castle Hotel answered to the suggestion, but
stands so severely alone that the catering and service
problems must have been difficult to solve, with
Launceston as the most convenient town for pro-
viding appetising food and the essential rubber-tyred
landau.
But there are worse hardships than lobsters fresh
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 131
from the sea, hot from the pot, and served with Cornish
cream. If vegetables lacked, the butcher did his best ;
the poultry none too plump was of native birth, and the
itinerant fishmonger was at least faithful in reserving
a sufficiency for our eating, although after perambu-
lating the long street with a barrow which was spread
on one side with fish, and on the other with fruit, he
would find his stock diminished to utter disappearance,
and became so confused by his clamouring customers
that he might be heard calling, " Fish all ripe, ripe
fish."
Irving drove every afternoon wherever he might
find himself during holiday times, and since the long
distance was his desire, a pair of horses had to be pro-
cured, some humour being extracted from the supply,
should these have been unaccustomed to each other's
company ; while, added to their detached inclinations,
might perhaps be a coachman who doubled this duty
with that of postmaster, or Wesleyan preacher, or local
magistrate. The ostlers at the livery stables were
again in the emergency class, but everywhere was
evident the wish to serve, the comic situation prevailing
often, and in a very primitive part of South Cornwall,
where the manager of the inn had carefully coached the
servants in their address of " Sir Henry/' while giving
no instruction for my appellation, I became entitled
as " My Grace."
Once upon a time there was a luncheon, and the
presiding monarch had asked :
" What is to be your next play, Irving ? J>
" King Arthur, sir."
" Ha ! ha ! " was the gruff guffaw ; " don't forget
to put in the incident of the cakes."
1 32 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Not a person at that table except J. Comyns Carr
saw cause, or dared, to smile at the inept caution.
Irving was punctiliously visited by any dignitary of
the Church who was in his neighbourhood, Deans being
unanimous in their prompt calling upon him. Whether
to upbraid him for his profession or to honour him for
the way he followed it, was not quite clear, but in any
event the result was the same, a subscription to some
local and most deserving cause.
But at Tintagel this popular incident was omitted,
although Bishop Ryle, now the Dean of Westminster,
was staying at the same hotel.
On the date when the summons came to attend the
postponed coronation of King Edward VII we drove
Irving over to Camelford Station, and as I contem-
plated those two separately parading the platform
beneath the light of the morning sun which twinkled
at the golden cross dangling upon the capacious black
silk waistcoat, I realised again, as I had at Canterbury,
how fittingly might the actor have worn the gaiters,
how well might the personality of the prelate suit the
motley. Beacons of light, both of them, I thought that
night as I was watching the fires flaming to the glory
of the King upon the seven surrounding hills which
overtopped the purple waters.
I am not quite sure what is the exact charm in
Tintagel, but it persists, whether in the little village
street where stands the old post office untouched by
the renovator, but no longer allowed an official exist-
ence, or when climbing the hill to the old church near
the golf links persistently invaded by munching sheep,
or wandering down the narrow road where little
children, all called " Awthur " or " Gwinnivear," rest
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 133
so comfortably upon upright slates that their physical
construction gives cause for conjecture.
Primitive peace reigns so happily there and in the
valleys beyond where, stepping warily on flat stones
between high-growing ferns and multicoloured wild
flowers entangled with honeysuckle, you may come
upon the open sea. There are no spots I know in
England like to these, and there is much to capture the
imagination on journeys to reach Port Isaac voted
rather dull, or the slate quarries at Delabole, where we
were presented with a slate which had imprisoned a
butterfly so tightly and securely that its complete shape
was impressed to reflect transparently the faint colours
of its frail existence.
Habitations are few and farming not too laboriously
practised. A cottager or so might be persuaded to
supply a lustre mug or jug, but rarely would she fill it
with milk or tea.
At St. Knighton's Kieve sits the custodian of the
keys, all framed in old oak as the proprieties demand,
but far more anxious to obtain our copy of the Daily
Graphic than to impart the traditional lore, legitimate
to his office.
Walking into Boscastle, a fascinating, quaint spot
centred with a turreted inn, and possessed of a quay,
a natural rock-bound harbour, and an idle water-mill
to face the situation, we followed the path up the woods
to the old Minster, to be told the story of a famous
young giant called Abraham because he was born to
his mother when she was half a century old.
Irving stood in happy reverie on a narrow cliff which
overlooked the caves inhabited by seals.
" We will go out and visit them one day," he was
134 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
saying, whilst I was thinking I should like to improve
a seal or two off the face of the waters on to my back,
when an incoherent female interrupted the dream, and
pushing his elbow, gasped :
;< Sir, sir, may I have the honour of shaking hands
with Hamlet ? "
We did have some gorgeous days down there in
Cornwall, days of never-failing delight, mornings over
the rocks in happy emotion at caverns invaded, by
waters now blue, now green, now violet ; evenings in
watching the magnificent orange and purple sunsets,
which stretched their splendour all around, making
pictures black, grey, green, violet or yellow or pale
blue in the depths of a sapphire sky.
It was certain that Irving never got entirely away
from the theatre, for he would tread a measure swiftly
from the balcony to the table, and gazing through the
window, would take up pencil or pen and ink and sketch
rapidly and very badly the outlines of the division of
colour, emphasising some shadows in gloom of varied
grey with :
" Might do very well in Dante ."
Irving had ever a keen eye for hoardings which
displayed theatrical posters, the more lurid the de-
picted scene the better to his taste. A burglar with a
lighted lamp upon a prone figure, a shipwreck in a sheet
of lightning, a gentleman in full evening dress knifing
a lady on a scarlet background would delight him as
evidence of the vitality of the theatre, and he was the
more pleased the more remote was the suburb where
he saw these. He knew that virtue would have its
just reward in the last act, and he was convinced that
playgoing was good for the people, glad to know that
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 135
some dramatic company was coming or had gone from
the out-of-the-way place.
To bear the theatrical torch through the world as
John Wesley carried the humble lesson of divinity was
his mission, and allowing for his subject, his time and
his circumstance, his welcome was scarcely less en-
thusiastic than that accorded to the great preacher of
the eighteenth century.
Irving was always exacting in punctuality, as was
John Wesley. He insisted upon service at the precise
moment fixed, in the same spirit as Wesley when kept
waiting for his chaise. " I have lost ten minutes for
ever."
I would wonder at times whether Irving regretted
his solitude, for we made a family life around him
altogether, and he had not been accustomed to con-
stant companionship except during his working times,
and here again detachment was necessarily the authori-
tative ruling.
I would say to him half apologetically when the
young people intruded into his room to devour
his peaches and feed him on gossip from below
stairs :
" Terrible business this for you, and I do not see
how you are going to escape us now during the
summers."
" No, I suppose not," he answered, and mused
whilst looking across at the Atlantic :
" There is always America you know, and I am very
fond of America, and you would never cross the ocean,"
so we smiled at each other with that comprehension
which I am encouraged to think gave him as much
pleasure as it gave pride to me.
136 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
During one of our visits in the South I suggested I
might be introduced to the place of his birth, Keinton,
which seemed to concern him less than the village
where he was brought up by a stern and adorable
aunt, and a bluff giant of a mining uncle, with a few
cousins scarcely less satisfactory.
We met one of those cousins together down in
Penzance, and she bore some resemblance to Irving in
the granite greyness of her outlines. Her name was
Kate, and I resented it as unseemly that she should
call Irving " Johnnie/' but her fault had to be con-
doned, for this had been her custom in his childhood.
We deposited the dear lady after a luncheon and a
drive at her own house overlooking the bay, and she
turned to me after kissing him good-bye, and promising
to nurse him should he ever be ill, with a request that I
would never leave him. I must go, she said, to the
United States with him, and I must become an actress
if needs be to guard him more carefully. This exhor-
tation excited Irving 's intense amusement, for he knew
I had as much terror of walking a liner as I should
have had of stepping upon the stage.
At any rate it was comforting to think that " Cousin
Kate " hailed me so thoroughly worthy and capable
with a willingness not to be gainsaid.
All roads might lead with Irving to the theatre, and
whilst he was poking fun at me when I proposed .that
to please Cousin Kate I might study the part of Martha
in Fattst, we argued on the dubious advantage of inti-
mate relations. Neither of us thought they should be
quite ignored, and I objected, laughing, to their
wholesale murder, which might tend to keep their
mourners from the playhouse.
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 137
" The Court must wear full mourning for a week"
he quoted from Louis the Eleventh ; but more seriously
he remonstrated, " Those in grief should go to the
theatre. That is what a theatre is for, to distract you
and take you out of yourself. "
Somehow that doctrine has made good for me since,
and in every trouble time, and I have had many, I take
solace at the theatre. Some evenings I ponder there
on the prevalence of humbug, the hollow mockery of
condolence, the soothing speech of those inquisitive
aliens who are always so certain the departed is well
and comfortably bestowed. Outside acquaintances
are full of hackneyed phrases signifying nothing except
their desire to get on with their duty to you, to acquit
themselves creditably by so many inches of superficial
sympathy measured out to the case of the financially
endowed or bereft. Friends understand and sit in
silence, or keep away.
There was once a gay sinner with an acquisitive hand
and a gushing manner calling to condole with a loving
niece-heiress upon the death of her wealthy aunt.
" Sybil, I am so sorry, dear ; and you were such an
angel to her, but she is better off where she is I am
sure." Then proceeded a tale of the speaker's financial
embarrassment and the request for an immediate loan
of ten pounds, which being tendered was eagerly
folded and pocketed with the amazing farewell :
" Good-bye, darling, how truly sweet you have
been, and I am so distressed for you, and I do hope
your dear aunt will soon be better."
St. Ives was amongst my objectives, because being
for the moment denied Keinton, I insisted upon an
introduction to Helston, the scene of Irving 's early
138 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
upbringing, and we drove over there to trace the house
where he had lived, ultimately finding it all unhallowed
and unmarked with no more distinction to it than the
fine groceries it contained and the royal insignia to
announce its privileges to perform the duties of a post
office.
Happily the attendant clerk had not been trained in
the Metropolis, and although she exhibited almost as
much ignorance as if she had enjoyed that advantage,
this was entirely detached from insolence.
It remains yet for perennial meditation the postal
clerk's attitude towards a customer or an enquirer.
Any intruder within her glass doors, or over her
wooden counter, acts as an irritant, as violent as the
red rag to a bull or any critic to any artist.
However, our little friend at the grocer's was inno-
cent of discourteous sin, but gurgled hysterically
when she recognised her guest, all unknowing that
he had ever dwelt within the walls of her occupa-
tion.
Irving strode along to investigation, ruminating over
the disused tin mines which dotted the hillside, and
stopping to inspect a shabby tin tabernacle where at
the age of eight he had collected a small audience to
hear him consign to eternal flames an ancient grand-
mother who had threatened him with awful penalty for
some Sabbatarian breach.
Back to Tintagel we went gleefully, but not too
swiftly, stopping somehow or other at Bude and the
little quiet station where the scuttling of the rabbits
would announce an approaching train. We had
luncheon at " The Falcon, " to wander down by the
little waterway which leads to the open, and here
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 139
Irving was greeted by some peripatetic relative of
Matthew Arnold's with fishing-rod in hand to suggest
her optimistic outlook.
All were definitely glad to receive us back at King
Arthur's Castle Hotel. " No spot like it," Irving was
again convinced as he stood upon his balcony the next
morning watching the clustering and the flight of the
seagulls, listening to the squeaks of the peewits, whose
fretful calls persisted with one dominant " peever " he
christened " Gwinnie," after a baby in the hotel, who
was for ever whining to an over-fond mother.
Every evening I looked in vain for the predatory
hawk in a moment of absolute immobility to swoop with
disaster upon some unconscious farmyard offender.
He kept no appointment I made with him, and I was
for ever wanting to meet the lark, and he failed no
less, but I did enjoy the experience of trying to coax
a nonchalant magpie while regretting my ignorance
of its lucky or unlucky significance, when all black, or
black and white, if approached from the rear or the
front.
Even the happiest holidays come inevitably to their
conclusion, but I know it was Irving's intention, after
he had completed the two years' farewell tour, to go
back again to Tintagel, engage those rooms where he
had spent so many contented weeks, and write his
memoirs which an enterprising American had failed
to encourage earlier, even with an offer of a pre-
liminary fee of five thousand pounds.
But that was not to be, and the last holiday we ever
spent together began at Whitby, passing at York Station
an old and very ill Lord Glenesk, standing bareheaded
under the impression that he, according to his wont,
140 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
was receiving Queen Victoria on her way up to Bal-
moral.
We ended our journey at Scarborough, taking Peter-
borough Cathedral on the homeward way, and finding
there the father of Stephen Phillip?, who was the Pre-
centor, a fine old fellow, most anxious to hear Irving's
opinion of his poet son, whose great ability was
shadowed by great weakness.
Oh ! Yorkshire was excruciatingly cold that year,
not even the broadest sweeps of purple heather could
console for the devastating winds which swept across
the dreary spaciousness, and I would get back from our
excursions grey and blue and green of face, with
fingers so frozen that boiling water scarcely warmed
to their touch.
" Cold in the earth and sixteen wild Decembers
From these brown moors have melted into Spring,
Faithful indeed is the spirit that remembers
After such years of pain and suffering."
" You like your country frappd," I would object,
and Irving expressed his conviction that cold was good
for him.
There was a young doctor staying in the hotel who
approached me with a warning :
" Sir Henry looks very ill, he ought to take more
rest, go to Egypt next winter and not think of acting
again. He won't live very long if he does not
rest."
That afternoon, after we had been to hear some
clever performance of the elder George Grossmith's,
and he had gone round to congratulate him upon his
big audience, I demanded of Irving :
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 141
" Supposing you were told that you would live ten
years if you would rest and only two if you continue to
act, what would you do ? "
Not a moment's hesitation went to the answer, " I
should act."
Just before Irving started work at Sheffield he,
Harry and I had visited Drury Lane Theatre to see
Alexander in The Prodigal Son. When we emerged,
and I was sitting in the carriage, I watched those two
so alike beneath the pale light over the door of the
Royal entrance, Harry on the higher step with his
chin almost against his father's shoulder, the two spare
gaunt figures, the two ultra-tall hats at the same angle,
the identical elegance in their attitude whilst they
puffed at their cigars. " I follow after " seemed clearly
emblazoned upon Harry ; alas ! a short dream so soon
dispelled.
A couple of weeks later Irving's life closed with
awful suddenness at Bradford. " Into thy hands,"
he had spoken his last words upon the stage with
Tennyson's in Becket.
Many have conjectured on Irving's feeling about
sudden death. I knew him very shocked at that fate
which befell his friend L. F. Austin. He realised,
too, the overwhelming blow for those who loved and
were left, and he repented his cynical putting forth
of " A few thousand pounds might compensate ? "
as soon as he understood the true pain of my
negation.
I can quote his own words in testimony to his
tenets.
" I believe in immortality, and my faith is
strengthened with advancing years ; without faith in
i42 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
things spiritual this life would indeed be a weary
waste."
No ! Irving would not have chosen to die suddenly,
and at work. Leisure with love to it from his sons and
his friends, he had intended to enjoy after his farewell
tour, which was planned to reach to America.
" A kindly continent to me, but I will not leave my
bones there if I can help it," he had written when
understanding himself too weak to complete the
project to go again.
About six months afterwards Joseph Hatton came
to see me, and I only make allusion to the flattering
lines he wrote upon that visit, because I would
correct a constantly repeated error about the making
of the pall of laurel leaves upon which, to the strains
of the funeral march from Coriolanus, the sun put its
golden stamp in Westminster Abbey.
I designed that pall, Harry obtaining for me a special
permission that it might be used instead of the velvet
one chosen for Lord Tennyson, but I did not make it
personally. It was the work of accomplished florists,
thousands of leaves went to its contrivance, mounted
closely to cover the green foundation, and it could
never have been achieved to perfection by any amateur
in a few days and nights. I believe indeed some dozen
workers went to its completion, but without a doubt
the effect was impressively, grandly symbolic. Yet
not a few famous have granted the idea the flattery of
an imitation of its outward seeming.
How have I dared to write about Irving at all ? I
cannot imagine, but since the life of the people is the
mainspring of every history I shall offer no excuse for
dwelling strenuously upon the personality of one of
DEATH MASK OF SIR HENRY IRVING
BY SIR GEORGE FRAMPTON, R.A.
Presented to the London Museum by Mrs. Bram Stoker.
To face page 142
ABOUT HENRY IRVING 143
the greatest of these. I disclose him of human enchant-
ment, taking some encouragement from his own
criticism upon the life of Gladstone :
" Three volumes, a stupendous book, about a stu-
pendous man, politician and ecclesiastic. As a bio-
graphy, uninteresting, because there are no trivialities
which make up existence and banish pomposity/'
CHAPTER XI
ABOUT THE SONS OF HENRY IRVING
I FIND it very difficult to write about Harry
Irving, the sad circumstance of his death is so
recent, and the glad circumstance of his living
is sacrosanct to me, since in all that concerned us
together, and there was much, he gave me a dear and
tender consideration quite unmeet for the printed
word.
Upon his work for the stage it is easy to dwell, and
the less discerning acclaim primarily his Admirable
Crichton a creation of fantasy and fun served with
sentiment and an irresistible suavity.
But with his Hamlet, which by reason of its insistent
vitality and clear with rapid utterance I reckon to be
the most fascinating I have heard, I was closely con-
nected, for the rehearsals and production took place
during a convalescence of his father's when we were
together at Torquay. His son's venture was so con-
stantly in the mind of Irving that he would give me
whole speeches with the emphasis and action he him-
self had played into the part. None of De Bureau
went to his attitude towards his offspring ; and on the
inaugural night the authorities kept the telegraph
office open to apprise a very proud father of the
rapturous reception accorded to a very gifted son.
I never saw the Hamlet of Irving the father, but I
144
ABOUT THE SONS OF HENRY IRVING 145
often watched the Hamlet of Irving the son, and once
from a box in the company of Irving, whose whispered
commentary on every movement and every word was
not the least elucidating and absorbing part of the
performance. It was rather an ordeal for Harry, but
he came bravely through, although as luck would have
it that night he was threatened with a serious throat
trouble, and an anxious wife was offering him beef tea
in the wings, while a professor of breathing exercises
stood hopefully outside his dressing-room door.
Harry presented Hamlet at various phases in his
career as manager in London and in the country, indeed
for more than twenty years. He, so to speak, rolled
himself up in that inky cloak, and seemed at times to be
veritably Hamlet, in all moods, now harsh, now tender,
now grave, now gay, but not truly disinclined to the
company of women, who by the way showed the greater
disposition towards him the less he encouraged them.
Harry was no anchorite, but never a light talker, yet
he would accept more gratefully a dinner with a pretty
neighbour than with a plain one ; and since he was
invariably charming, he owned many beautiful and
distinguished adorers, " the young of all ages " I used
to call them, and they came in their numbers to the
theatre eager to snatch a chance to return to sup with
him and his wife, most admirable of cooks, with a
might-have-been-dangerous tendency to believe,
" All's right in the world so long as Harry is amused
and contented. "
Harry was student, scholar, reader, recluse, observer
and introspector, but never the philanderer, notwith-
standing that fortune had so well provided him. Books
and books and books again absorbed most of his affec-
146 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
tions, and his library grew to prodigious proportions,
excluding no worthy modern or classic author.
But while he inclined towards crime in others, and
gloried in concentrated study of the best and worst
murders in two cities, the investigation of their state
of mind being his first ambition, he was the sweetest
prince that ever stepped in the dominion of domesticity.
To hear him talk of his daughter Elizabeth was the
whole alphabet of paternal love and joy.
What those two grew to be to each other made
especially cruel the tragedy of his passing on whilst she
was scarcely on the threshold of her exquisite young
girlhood, which he would have watched and cherished
and guided with such pride.
He was a fortunate fellow, for he married the
woman he loved, and he loved the woman he married,
and their children beautifully completed the union,
Laurence, the firstborn, flying to fame and the Croix
de Guerre, and Elizabeth being just Elizabeth and a
world of happiness to him in the mere pronunciation
of her name.
Harry was ultra-sensitive, or perhaps only over-
indulged . The theatre was his inheritance , and he must
guard its interests zealously. Here was his conviction,
and he was well fitted to his task, being of dignified
demeanour, of ready speech, and of an absolute sin-
cerity. As a leader, or the ideal President of a Royal
Academy of Acting ? as a delegate, he was the man ;
and his brother actors never grudged him prominent
place. They were glad of him as representative, spirit
and person going well to the part of spokesman, while,
with his own company, he would never hesitate to
preach the gospel of good, would take trouble to hold
ABOUT THE SONS OF HENRY IRVING 147
this^one from drink and that one from gambling,
understanding the weaknesses of others, and never
exhibiting the tiresome attributes of the prig, and
always possessed of the courage to voice his convictions.
Very characteristic was Harry's attitude when an air
raid was dropping bombs on the Strand, and a famous
author shielding himself from shrapnel under an
umbrella, while terrified crowds were rushing into the
vestibule of the Savoy Theatre during his rehearsal of
a new play. He listened to the tales of disaster without,
sent word that he would gladly be invaded by any who
were frightened, and returned to his labours on the
stage, complete calm in his demeanour while he
commanded :
" Get on with the photographs/'
Later, during the war, when the world of play-acting
was too trivial for his best devotions, he left the
theatre and gave his time to the Admiralty, being
placed, strange to say, in the most obviously suitable
position, the Secret Investigation Department, where
he remained as long as he was physically able. And
during that time I saw him most frequently, for he
was living at Harrow, and would wait with me for the
special train he favoured.
No affectation whatever went to Harry Irving, and
he was not exactly a saint, rather the complete child
in simple revelation of his feelings, of his entertainment,
of his boredom.
He demanded congenial company, or he would have
none, alike up at Oxford, at his clubs, and in Ws home.
Should it fail him entirely, he was absent or dumb. I
have known him enter a room, look around, notice a
stranger, deliberately throw a brick of his disapproval
148 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
of him by an overpowering silence. Moody and dull
he was with those he did not care about, and you could
read in his preoccupied mien " a waste of time."
Should he speak at all then, he would be quick to
controversy, glad to make argument with an uncon-
genial, and rarely persuadable to the casual course of
conversation. But if treated temperately, and not
rushed to the more patently polite conclusion, he would
occasionally repent, and on a certain afternoon he came
in like a lion to growl at a lamb of God he had not
expected to find, and therefore instinctively resented,
until he was wooed to interest by a well-expressed view
of the piety and true religion which might be observed
in criminals.
Harry was on to this at once, drawing his chair up
round the fire, restraining all further furtive glances at
the door, whence he had intended to make immediate
escape, and entering with enthusiasm into a discussion
of the psychology of the thief, with one foot in a fire-
proof safe and the other in a fire-proof hell.
The curtain on that converse did not descend until
2 a.m., but the epilogue of friendship remained un-
spoken, Harry having squeezed the informer dry, left
him to work out his own salvation with that of others.
But devoted as Harry was to the study of crime,
impressed as he might be with his duty as a citizen,
distressed at the disaster and cruelty engendered by
patriotism, yet the heart of him was in the tradition of
the theatre, a strange truth since the theatre is after
all but make-believe, yet he had the hereditary faith
in its fine influence, its possibilities to uplift and to
teach, whilst undoubtedly he took considerable pleasure
in acting.
ABOUT THE SONS OF HENRY IRVING 149
Physically also Harry resembled his father in much,
although their chins and their brows were as markedly
different as the tales of their lives, for whereas Irving
fought every inch of the battle alone upon the hardest
roads, Harry walked ever upon velvet, thick laid with
an anxious devotion.
I am so proud of a letter he once sent to me.
" You do write the most cheering, delightful and
encouraging letters. It does one's heart good to get
such a message. Your faith and trust mean a great
deal to me. There is no one who seems to understand
me and sympathise with me as you do, and it is a happy
and cheering thought that it is perhaps because you
loved and felt with father, and know how he would
have regarded things. Times theatrically are very
difficult just now, and the whole rather chaotic. Com-
petition is terribly severe. We have to fight against
opposition unknown thirty years ago. It is going to
be a struggle to hold our own in present conditions.
Where will you be next week ? I want so much to see
you and have a talk. You are a dear, and I so enjoyed
that long, I hope not too long, afternoon we had
together. Yours ever, H. B. I."
As all the world knows, H. B. Irving was a fine
speaker on many topics, and had for years delivered
lectures at the Royal Institute and in all parts of the
country, yet it was surprising that he should receive a
request to preach at St. Martin 's-in-the-Fields.
He accepted the idea with his usual diffidence and
the query of " a free hand ? "
He made his subject, " The amusement of the
ISO MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
people," setting forth his points with such apt skill
that the ecclesiastical authorities were not entirely
gratified by his tale.
No prelate, however enlightened, could perhaps be
expected to be quite pleased by :
' When one thinks of all the harm that has been
done in this world in the name of religion by kings
and princes and statesmen, really of all human employ-
ment, the theatre seems to be the most innocent, the
least susceptible of mischief and perversion. "
" At any rate our present attitude towards Sunday
amusement is both illogical and hypocritical ; cine-
matograph theatres are allowed to be open on Sunday
on a condition that they give some comparatively small
portion of their proceeds to charity. But if on Sunday
in a cause purely for charity someone wants to play a
play of Shakespeare's, or even a little duologue of a
most harmless and innocent character, it is forbidden.
Here we have humbug in its highest and best mani-
festation. What are you as a Church going to say to
insincerity of this kind ? Are you going to say that all
Sunday entertainment is sinful, or to accept an evasion
of the principle, which deliberately excludes all that
is highest and most elevating in dramatic art ? . . .
You of the Church can do something in recognising
first of all that the amusement of the people is as
natural and wholesome a necessity as their health or
spiritual welfare. Never has the public been catered
for so prodigally as to-day, and that prodigality will
certainly not get less as time goes on. You cannot
hope to stem the tide, take it at the flood and try your
THE MODEL OF THE SILVER AND JEWELLED CASKET
USED IN THE "MERCHANT OF VENICE"
To face page 150
ABOUT THE SONS OF HENRY IRVING 151
utmost to guide at least a part of it into worthy channels,
so you will be serving, I believe, not only the cause of
art but indirectly the cause of religion. The art of
the theatre is a great art, and the gifts of the play-writer
and actor are as much God's gifts as the gifts of poet,
painter and musician."
There was a great deal more to it, all excellent, but
the Bishop of London is not yet a professing playgoer,
albeit lesser lights of the Church have been known to
crowd to special performances with orders — holy orders !
It was with Harry I first made entry into the studio
of Thomas Brock, sculptor, to whom was entrusted the
statue to Irving, for which all the members of the pro-
fession had united in purse and power to secure pride
of place near the National Portrait Gallery.
What a fine fellow I found Brock, the embodiment of
simplicity, keen in his desire for our opinion on the
likeness, for he had only met Irving once in his life,
and the task was not easy with so many to criticise and
give counsel on the attitude and the gesture. Everyone
seems to have had something to say about the costume
too, for all had agreed he should not be presented as
an actor, but as a man, while it was impossible to hope
for a righteously artistic result in a frock-coat. How-
ever, the happiest mean was arrived at, and often after-
wards I sat with Brock in the studio whilst he was at
work on Queen Victoria's memorial.
" British I desire it to be, definitely British," and no
one can stand opposite that white gold-crowned pile
with its typical groups and bronze interruptions and
note the splendid sturdiness with the beauty of its art
without understanding that Sir Thomas Brock, K.C.B.,
MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
realised his own conception of his duty, and did it most
splendidly well.
With this and Gladstone's figure in the Strand, and
Irving 's in Charing Cross Road, Brock will live through
many centuries. He is at work yet in the studio where
he first came a youth to study under Foley, the
sculptor, and where recently I took Harry's son
Laurence, who is well on the way to a career as artist
on canvas and stone.
They are odd coincidences that the last appearance
which Sir Henry Irving made upon the stage should
have been at His Majesty's Theatre when he played
Waterloo for the benefit of Lionel Brough, and that
the last appearance of H. B. Irving on the stage was
also at His Majesty's Theatre, and for the benefit of the
Royal Pension Fund. Odd again too that my last letter
from Irving was concerned with the Shylock of
Bourchier, and that the last time I saw H. B. Irving
we talked of the Shylock of Muscovitch.
" Not like father's, eh ? " he had said, and I assured
him not.
He died two days afterwards, and upon his grave-
stone, which is set in a rock garden overflowing with
blossom, are inscribed some verses, which he had ever
loved, written by Clough :
" Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not nor faileth,
And as things have been, they remain.
And not by Eastern windows only,
When daylight conies, comes in the light,
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright."
ABOUT THE SONS OF HENRY IRVING 153
I knew Laurence Irving long before I knew Harry,
but never so well. He had few intimates before his
marriage, and afterwards none so congenial as his
wife, Mabel Hackney, who was for some time in the
company with him and his father.
I remember so well a letter from America which
came to announce a suspicion of this growing attach-
ment. Irving had a most keen eye for romantic in-
trigues, nothing ever escaped him, and he saw more
when he wasn't looking than Argus might have
glimpsed beneath the light of the harvest moon.
" Miss Hackney," it appeared, " was trudging round
New York carrying books for Laurence. " That
settled it, I suspect, her docile acceptance of the burden
of books, for Laurence, like Harry, was devoted to
reading.
But although he and I never grew to the completest
sympathy until after the death of his father, we had many
cheery hours together, when he would prove a most
delightful companion, and of that superlative ability
which went to the making of several plays ; of Peter
the Great, of Lovelace, and of his dramatic adaptation of
Dostoieffsky's Crime and Punishment, of his translation
of Les Hannetons into The Incubus, and to his splendid
acting in The Typhoon and in Ibsen's Pretenders.
When talking to Laurence I found it hard to per-
suade him of the admiration he had widely won, or of
the deep love of his father, whom he adored.
It is not easy to convince one silent undemonstrative
man of the affection of another of like habit.
When sometimes I said to Irving, " Laurence does
not believe you truly love him," he would look very
serious, and then with sly fun :
iS4 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
" Does he want me to kiss him ? "
Laurence could not help his own disposition, and
his more wary ways, perhaps nurtured in his earliest
years, and further encouraged during the time spent
in Russia in preparation for Diplomacy, an idea he
subsequently abandoned. He was suspicious of most
people, indeed he was never quite sure of my honour-
able intentions, but he grew resigned gradually to my
constant presence, and he would seek me often in coun-
cil, and would say with half-jesting envy, when noting
what affectionate terms Harry and I had achieved :
" I am the second son of old Sir Rowland," in quota-
tion from As You Like It ; for even while he deeply
admired his brother, he would, almost against his
inclination, wonder whether Harry's superior fortune
had been merited.
He was rather restless and dissatisfied, argumentative,
rebellious, " always agin the Government," his father
would say of him with such tender pride going to the
pronouncement. Like Harry, Laurence was lucky in
his marriage, except that it lacked the children he always
desired, and although he would vary his own policy,
should this be right ? would that be good ? shall I
succeed ? shall I make money ? he was ever certain
of the course his father should pursue. " My father
ought " to do so and so, or so and so, he would dogma-
tise ; and amongst the many things that Laurence
thought his father should not do was to occupy the
centre of the stage as Shylock whilst he was playing
Antonio. Amongst the things he thought his father
should do was, however, to produce Captain Brass-
bound's Conversion ; his arguments in favour of this
were voluble, and extensive on one wearisome after-
ABOUT THE SONS OF HENRY IRVING 155
noon when he enforced his plea by reading the play
aloud to me from beginning to end, not exactly en-
couraging me to back up his advice, but had I done
so I am aware the result would have been exactly the
same. Irving was never persuaded to produce any
play he did not wish to produce, nor for that matter to
do anything he didn't think it well to do.
Laurence acted much with his father, Harry never,
although both daughters-in-law were in his company
for a considerable time, Mabel Hackney being the
best conceivable dauphin in Louis the Eleventh, whilst
Dorothea presented Julie in The Lyons Mail with a
magnificently vigorous shriek, and both endowed
Annette in The Bells with the essential vivacity. No
one was ever as good in Waterloo as Mabel, and I have
seen at least half a dozen assume the gentle charm of
the girl from the country who came to tend her uncle
" all the way by train. "
Mabel Hackney might in truth be termed the ideal
mate for Laurence. " Launy," as she used to call him
when they sat with me together with the beloved grey-
haired Irish terrier to play " the dog between." She
shared all his ambitions and his labours, read with
him, worked with him, talked with him, no matter how
tired she might be. She managed all his tours, learnt
typewriting for his benefit, and, so far as she could,
took every business worry from his shoulders, attend-
ing on him with no less assiduity at home than at the
theatre.
He could do nothing without her, and I recall once
when Irving and I and my daughter were at Minehead
we drove over to fetch them from some cottage they
occupied near The Quantocks, and Laurence's attempt
156 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
to pack his own clothes resulted in his appearing that
night at dinner minus a necktie or a waistcoat, in a
black evening jacket and blue serge trousers. Laurence
had the abstracted way, but he cared so desperately for
what he might be planning at the time that all else in
the world was obscured to him.
Slackness could never be attributed to him when at
work or preaching scarlet Socialism, and his health was
luckily of the first robust order. He was a fine fellow
physically and mentally, and when news came to me
that he and his wife were drowned in the St. Lawrence
River I could only reiterate again and again, " I am
glad Irving is dead, he could not have borne this."
My box of treasured letters holds one Laurence
wrote to me after he had knelt by the bedside of his
father on the day of the calamity at Bradford. A few
lines of it run :
" But there was much love in his nature, and those
who would say he only worshipped and loved his
success wronged him.
Nothing must ever break the tie that exists between
us, the affection we both had for my dear father ; I
shall always be grateful to you for all you did to relieve
and brighten the solitude of his last years. I wished
yesterday you could have seen him as he lay there as
calmly as if he were asleep.
I don't write to you about the loss to dramatic art
and the nation, that is for others. I write to you as to
one who was very fond of him, and of course this is
from us both, Mabel as well as me.
Affectionately yours,
LAURENCE IRVING."
SIR HENRY IRVING, WITH HIS SON LAURENCE AND
FUSSIE ON THE LINKS AT CROMER
To face page 156
ABOUT THE SONS OF HENRY IRVING 157
Later, after we had read many printed pages of
sheer eulogy, Laurence, characteristically discontented,
would say, " I wish they would not make such a white-
winged angel of father. He was never that."
However, we agreed upon accepting Max Beer-
bohm's summary, " A great romantic figure, and his
death is like the loss of a legend/'
CHAPTER XII
ABOUT JAMES K. HACKETT, MRS. J. E. PANTON,
W. L. GEORGE AND JAMES B. FAG AN
THE death of Henry Irving brought to con-
clusion the best epoch of my life, which has
been definitely divided into four parts, the
careless, the commercial, the devotional and the idly
conventional.
What good for others I have done in any of these is
deplorably little.
" Unto him who works and feels he works the same
grand year is ever at the door," but there is no such hope
for her who plays and knows she plays, deliberately
setting aside any serious labour and any serious thought
on any serious circumstances. I might dwell sadly
upon my missed chances, but dwelling sadly upon
anything is not amongst my habits, to live and laugh in
the sunlight being my lower ambition, whilst I ponder
as little as maybe, and talk as long as I can, knowing
my politics are mainly platonic and my faith vaguely
and beautifully accompanied by angels draped in
rainbows.
Mrs. J. E. Panton used to tell me to greet gladly
old age because it is so restful.
Mrs. Panton is a very wise creature with a delicate
air of a Cosway miniature and slim white fingers en-
circled with many coloured jewels. She sits at ease now
158
ABOUT MRS. J. E. PANTON 159
gowned in black silk, diatribing against the ways of
to-day, airing her old grievance against her father,
Derby Day Frith, R.A., whose double matrimonial life
remains eternally amongst her disgruntles. She boasts
a moral outlook of the violent Victorian type, and
although only about a dozen years older than I am,
she persists with a flattering smile to talk to me as
if I were in my first youth. We agree that every-
one is most capable of legislating for others, and
know that the world would be rather dull should we
have no chance to cavil at the coiffure or conduct
of Mrs. A., or at Mr. B.'s treatment of his wife, or at
Mrs. C.'s management of her business, or at Mr. D.'s
achievement of his pleasure, which are all alike impos-
sible of universal approval.
What then can I bring to judgment of myself by
myself ? Those few nightshirts for the soldiers which
I endowed with embroidery to limit the output, and
some pneumonia jackets stabbed in silk to the high-
class commendation of Lady Bland-Sutton.
Incidentally I always regret the energy which goes
to bazaars in the acquirement of goods and their dis-
posal, knowing that the direct presentation of the ex-
penditure might total to more profit, while far less
fatigue and far more entertainment are involved in a
public dance.
But yet I have a pleasant memory of one bazaar,
which was of course conducted, as all good bazaars
are, upon the lines of Mark Twain's city where
the Chinamen lived by taking in each other's
washing.
However, I sold to Queen Alexandra a little jacket
made by my mother, who with all the enthusiasm of
160 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
her age was enchanted to hear of the royal destiny
which befell her handiwork.
But that properly loyal spirit was not so blatant
a few weeks after King Edward's coronation, when
during a journey in a third-class carriage I was much
entertained by a pair of old crones watching a down-
pour splashing the windows while they dialogued :
" Raining hard, ain't it ? 'E don't Jave the weather
'is mother 'ad, do 'e ? "
" No, p'raps 'e don't deserve it neither."
But I want to confess to my cowardice during air
raids when I was dangerously threatened by the glass
skylight to my flat in Fitzroy Square, where the old
cellars were most inviting, and I sat one night with
my cook, whose prayers for forgiveness were so loud
and so heartrending I had to reproach her into smiles
with :
:t I had no idea you were such a bad cook and such
a careless calculator."
Another evening of terror was spent there behind
curtains in a darkened room, while Harold Begbie
preached faith and hope to me in full view of a lighted
airship hovering over the dim square.
I contrast myself most unworthily with Irene
Scharrer who rented that flat for the birth of her baby
and was visited by an air raid some three days after
the event, when she calmly allowed herself to be carried
to the cellar, showing, I was told, through the day and
night a serene demeanour and a complete absence of
fear. All honour to her.
No, I cannot excuse my futility even to myself, and
I am sure should I venture to try and enter heaven on
any pretension I should deserve the same answer as he
ABOUT W. L. GEORGE
161
who pleaded on the strength of a couple of coppers
once given to a beggar :
" Take your damned twopence and go below."
Meanwhile I remain here yet cultivating my gre-
garious germ, but daring to confess now I grow tired
of making excursions with it at all times.
I have become the reluctant diner out, more content
to take my later meals alone, the theatre or reception
to follow being yet among acceptable and accepted
pleasures. The old Duke of Northumberland used to
say, pointing to a small table at the furthest end of
his lofty library in the ancient Northern Castle,
" That's what it all comes to, a cutlet and a glass of
port." But I have not arrived there yet, and it must
not be thought that my evening meal by my own fire-
side is of the salt-haddock-upon-the-knee type, popu-
larly supposed to be the favourite food of the lonely
female, while she reads the last edition and is well
convinced of the unrighteousness of the prevailing
ways. But I am greatly conscious that there is some-
thing to be said in favour of real old age, but complete
restfulness is not upon the lower shelf which I occupy,
and I reply gladly to the call of any invitation which
seems to point joyously. A party holds perennial
charm for me, so that it shall be a party composed
of the best sympathetic material.
W. L. George is amongst my friends who have a
perfect passion for parties. He is always arranging
these and peremptory in their announcement through
a very Dearly in the morning telephone, " Come here,
come there, come anywhere, but come."
Of many such commands I recall one which
ran ;
1 62 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
" You must come to dinner to-night to meet the
American actor James K. Hackett. He knew Irving
and wants to know you. Don't argue, and don't be
selfish, 8 o'clock sharp."
There it was, and so it came to pass that I met J. K.
Hackett, and we grew to intimacy almost at first sight,
when we talked yesterday, to-day and to-morrow, and
I learnt the amazing fact that he was born when his
father was seventy years old.
Hackett is a fine figure of a man, and if I were a little
younger, or a little older, I might have dared to admire
his grace and his power. As it was I just listened to
him respectfully while he told me his views of Macbeth
which were then crystallising to a London production,
and then he related an experience which even to the
least psychic would have offered food for deep reflec-
tion. James K. Hackett had, like Pharaoh, dreamt a
dream ; but no symbolism went to its significance, no
prophecy of prosperity or of poverty. It was a plain
unadulterated dream of disaster, and the terrific
tragedy of it was related immediately, so that no
hallucination or exaggeration went to the detail simply
and promptly transmitted. None the less it is as
difficult to believe in the occurrence as to comprehend
the mystery of its inspiration.
Hackett, possessed always of an immense reverence
for Irving, whom he had known well in America, was
also intimate with Harry, and had asked him in town
to act lago to his Othello.
Harry, while regretting that his other engagements
did not permit this, proposed :
" Laurence might be able to come. He is an
excellent lago, and played the character with Tree."
ABOUT JAMES K. HACKETT 163
" I don't know Laurence ; what does he look like ?
I should be very pleased to have him with me, but I
am pledged to go to Paris to-day. Do you think he
would come there and talk the matter over ? J!
Harry promised to try and arrange it so.
The following night Hackett, awaking suddenly from
his sleep, told of a terrible nightmare with a ship in
distress, of a drowned man on the beach, and of many
awful moments which had gone in a vain attempt to
revive him.
" Strange, strange, " he repeated to his wife, Beatrice
Beckley, " it is all so vivid, so clear, and we tried hard
to bring him round."
In the morning the New York Herald published a
portrait of Laurence Irving with the news that he had
been drowned.
' That is the face of the man of my dream," cried
Hackett as he looked at the pictured page ; " that is
his face, and he was so pale, and the water ran from
his hair. I shall never forget it."
Why this prevision should have been granted time
will never reveal, for undoubtedly the American actor
knew little of the English actor, while it was certain
that he had never seen him, and the casual observer
would not be prone to grant unto James K. Hackett
any specially spiritual attribute.
Despite the fine exercise of his imagination in his
Macbeth, and I have seen none better, he is yet promi-
nently upon the material side.
" J. K.," as his friends love to call him, has achieved
much over here, and the fact of his being invited by
the French Government to appear at the Odeon as
Macbeth and Othello, with the unique result of the
1 64 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
presentation of the Legion d'Honneur, made inter-
national history, bordering upon the political line.
During that eventful week in Paris the authoritative
hustling methods of the man from New York gave
occasion to some fun with rapid work for those
watching devotedly his interests over here.
The telephone bell rang.
" You are wanted by Paris, madam/' Our very
modern J. K. employed my daughter as his business
representative, therefore it would not be right for me
to mention that his geniality, his generosity and the
magnetic charm of him combine to make him deeply
beloved by all who serve him.
" Wanted on the telephone from Paris " was a
prelude to a rush of desire to secure anything, every-
thing, that might be needed.
" Gemier decided not to act ; please send over at
once an lago, letter perfect. "
As the performance was to take place two days
after this mandate, it was not quite easy to obey it.
However, needs must when affection drives, and H. A.
Saintsbury was found willing to answer to the call,
possessing a passport as luck would have it, and being
fully equipped with many years of experience.
But this was not the end of that perfect day's
demand.
Seven p.m. ' You are wanted on the telephone
from Paris, madam, " gave a little cause for anxiety,
and a prayer that there was no demand for a Desde-
mona, since Mrs. Hackett was the ideal already
there.
" Decided to have understudy for Malcolm. Can
you forward by aeroplane the man I had in London ? "
ABOUT JAMES K. HACKETT 165
Some commands these, one lago by train and one
Malcolm by aeroplane. Whiteley, the Universal
Provider, might have been put to it in proving his title,
but the appointed was worthy of her hire, the wishes
of Hackett were not gainsaid, what he wanted he had,
and there was an end to it.
J. K. was known as a matin6e idol of the deepest
dye, when he walked to his triumph in the States in
The Prisoner of Zenda, but he always denied this
accusation, yet it is obvious that he could execute the
pas de fascination, and to be sure the majority of women
would deny now the existence of such a character as a
matinee idol. She is quite certain she is no more
attracted by actors than by others.
I am possessed with an idea that I understand
women, while I am quite aware she would contradict
this. At any rate I am tolerant of her, and I am as
convinced as I dare be that she rapidly approaches the
reactionary stage, growing inclined towards matrimony
and maternity.
She can talk as much as she likes, and she does about
her desire for freedom and her content in an Adamless
Eden, but seldom is either assertion actually true.
The normal girl is exactly like she always was in the
heart of her, and given a sufficiency of income to meet
her needs which necessarily vary, she just wants a
husband and a baby.
Having secured them, it is possible that she may
only enjoy them for a few years, and then be off for
adventure in some more exciting arena than she can
find round the domestic hearth.
But as someone else observed, marriage is the proper
conclusion of every woman's education, even though
1 66 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
it doesn't complete it to finality ; for this she must
plough her way through the world of experience,
pleasure and pain.
It is as open to dispute whether the woman of
achievement in public service is as happy as she of
the narrower intellect who waits contentedly to wel-
come the evening return of her husband, as it is in-
controvertible that public life to-day destitute of the
services of woman would be very difficult to carry on.
Ah ! there is the rub. It is impossible to visualise
political and industrial affairs independent of the help
of woman.
No Government Department would fairly deny this,
indeed all use her in the highest branches, and there
is not a municipal administration able to carry on
comfortably without her, while we must recognise that
some of the best hospitals are managed and staffed
by her, and that the multitude of her industries in the
charitable way adds up to incalculable sum.
Therefore should she be allowed, as indeed she is,
a greater measure of tolerance than formerly, so would
she be well persuaded not to outstep the constable — by
the way what an admirable policeman she does make —
and be sufficiently considerate to evade the unfortunate
position of being beholden to her man's earnings to
keep well above the valley of debt.
Nothing so humiliating and degrading should be
her lot as an announcement that some ungrateful
husband or another had firmly decided not to be
responsible for her liabilities. Far better to wear the
silk stockings of an artificial life than to choose to dis-
honourable financial disaster a finer quality with
openwork clox. Would nine-tenths of the world
ABOUT W. L. GEORGE 167
of women prefer to sit in a maternity gown expectant
with a monthly nurse, or tread the firm measure
up the aisle of Westminster following the footsteps
of Lady Astor, who has, however, long since obtained
the maternity degree up to the sixth form ? I wonder ?
even though Gradgrind said, " Never wonder " ; but
there are so many inducements to-day to deny him right.
I find cause in the failure of my pet project
to reform the reproductions of fashions in news-
papers. I desired to photograph them even while
realising the many accomplished pens and brushes
devoted with skilful art to the task. Failure was my
lot, my efforts being despised and rejected by the
majority of advertisers.
However, the experience was interesting to me,
for amongst the many slips of girls of no bulging
outlines selected to sit as model for an illustrated
catalogue of underclothes is the wife of one of our
well-known actor-managers to-day.
That poor murdered " Babs " Taylor too would
good-naturedly come over to my Bond Street studio
and pose for me in novel millinery, and she was so
pretty too, and an adept at the rare art of adjusting a
toque to exactly the right angle.
No less generous again was Miss Kelly, then of the
Gaiety Theatre, who sat for me once in a kimono
which was reproduced in colour in a catalogue. But
coloured or not, bad or excellent, assisted as I was all
gratis by amiable and beautiful girls, the idea never
caught on. Trade would have its more idealised way,
the perfect outline which seldom grew on land or
flourished at sea, and the natural figures were too
accurate to please ; the only exception, persistently
i68 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
appreciative of the camera for fashion work, is The
International Fur Store, which yet issues illustrations
of furs photographically stamped to perfection-
surface, texture and light and shade, shed by the lens
upon most sumptuous skins of all kinds.
The special sympathy which exists between me and
W. L. George arises I believe from our equal affection
for clothes, for clothes and the woman I might say,
since W. L. George's predilection for the feminine
has taught him to understand her clothes with an
educated taste cultivated in France, the land of his
birth. In paying court, the Frenchman never leaves
out of his programme the subtle flattery of his interest
in the dress of his beloved. The Englishman is
content to applaud the success of the selected, the
Frenchman will assist personally to secure it, and will
subsequently supply the righteous posy to grace
becomingly both gown and girl.
W. L. George is the ideal husband who has never
been known to turn a deaf ear, a blind eye, or an empty
purse upon the possible truth of the cry, " I want a
new hat." It is unimaginable that he should ever
answer as other husbands might, " What's the matter
with the one you're wearing ? ': Rather I can picture
him leaving his house stealthily at once and alone to
proceed down Regent Street, or to Hanover Street, or
towards some private atelier — he is well acquainted
with them all — to bring the desirable to the desiring,
while he defies her not to like it. His instinct may be
well trusted to that extent ; or even as far as the com-
plete trousseau his judgment would be right for the
special aim of his beneficence, his choice inclining
towards the bizarre which shall be remarkable and
ABOUT W. L. GEORGE 169
remarked. I dare to assert this desire to produce the
remarkable and the remarked has an influence alike
upon W. L. George's politics, his misapplied patriotism
and his diatribes against present-day drama.
He marshals his notions deliberately and with such
statistics to prove them justifiable that we must needs sit
to attention. " Too many babies and too many books "
can sum up his attitude towards the obtaining con-
ditions in economics and education. But W. L. George
and I were not bent on discussing either of these,
when I first saw him inclining affectionately towards
courtship on a steam launch on the river, with a hostess
blatantly concerned about the effect of his advances on
an unendowed relation who had been marked " for
money only " in the marriage market.
I have never understood the foundation for the
romantic success of W. L. George, but none can refuse
to admit its existence. Women become devoted to him,
and would go to any lengths to promote his welfare
abroad and his comfort at home. Mayhap his twinkling
steel eyes combine with the expert methods due to
long practice to bring the reward due to patience, but
since I like W. L. George very much and gratify
most gladly his taste for the best plum cake when-
ever he offers to come to tea with me, I try to believe
his ugly confessions via Ursula Trent are founded
on figments of his brain and not on facts of his
fortune.
* Why do you write such books as your Bed of
Roses and Ursula Trent?" I asked him one day, and
he replied at great length, as he will when encouraged.
And was he not then in training for a lecture tour
in America ?
170 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
' I write them because I hope they interpret life as
it is, beautiful life, hideous life, just life. If a writer
has any claim to be called an artist he must be the
showman of life : he must hold up the mirror to life.
It is not his business to amend the reflection which
appears in his mirror. Saints or harlots, scenes in the
bower of Amaryllis, or under the gallows, it's all the
same to him. I do not care whether my words hurry
young women ' along the road to ruin ' or ' arouse
them to better things . ' Where the young women spend
eternity is their affair, not mine. My affair is to tell
the truth."
"All right, " I acquiesced — it is really hopeless to
argue with W. L. George — " perhaps there is some
excuse for your intimate revelations, but will you mind
if I mention I prefer you ' Making an Englishman '
than you when unmasking a courtesan ? I admire you
so keenly in your ' Second Blooming ' that I wait with
impatience for your third, which shall explain you as
the good, the courageous, tender-hearted fellow you
really are."
Of course, like all good authors, he wants to write
for the stage, and we^ were discussing the essential
tricks of the trade at the Court Theatre one night,
and after a performance there of Twelfth Night I
offered to introduce him to James Bernard Pagan.
Congratulations were resounding on all sides, and
they were genuine, which is not the adjective invariably
appropriate to felicitations rendered under such con-
ditions.
I should say that behind the scenes had echoed more
eliberate lies than even the House of Commons on
JAMES BERNARD FAG AN
To face page 170
ABOUT JAMES PAGAN 171
Budget day, the counters at Strand bars, or the walls
of the boudoir of my lady, in full confidence with her
dearest friend.
After all, how can you, knowing all the trouble and
the anxiety which go to theatrical performance, de-
liberately visit the promoter to mention the faults he
had so laboriously committed ?
Nothing of this, however, went to that special
meeting with James Fagan. Twelfth Night was a
consummate success, and then, as now, I am con-
vinced that should the National State- Aided Theatre
ever have birth, which it will not, the ideal leader
endowed by nature, art, personality and industry — my
word, what eulogy, almost gush ! — is James Fagan.
Ecce Homo, albeit irreverent, is all-righteous.
I take James Pagan's work for granted, arid dwell
awhile upon his simple attraction intellectual and phy-
sical, inclusive of his softly tucked evening shirt-front
and his gold-lighted Carpentier coiffure, and knowing
him a rabid Irishman, I recognise that a nice dash of
flattery goes to enhance his intimacy. I like him to
come and sit beside me and talk to me of finance,
while we confess to each other that the book we most
detest is a fully made up bank-book, and that we regard
good acting and playhouses with literary ambition as
amongst the things worth striving for.
His beautiful wife sings like an angel and acts with a
sense of true comedy, which almost vitalised Heart-
break House. She suffers sadly the outrageous accu-
sation of being a self-appointed leading lady, which
she most certainly is not. Yet she bears the slander
amiably, whilst deeply conscious that " Jim " is the
faithful culprit. She is a confirmed entertainer
172 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
within her spacious marble-floored music-room so
surprisingly tacked on to her seventeenth-century
house in Chelsea, where the tapestry arras hangs as
appropriate introduction to the fine old carved staircase
and some bountiful banquets of my greedy memory.
James Fagan and I were discussing the future of
theatres with an optimism essential to their existence
at all when he told me a characteristic tale of Tree.
" Many years ago, having just returned from a two
years' sojourn in Italy, I met Tree outside His Majesty's
Theatre. I told him I thought of taking up acting again
and suggested I should play Cassio in a revival of
Othello which he was then contemplating. He looked
very interested, and replied, ' Yes, yes, I should like
to talk to you about that. Come and drive with me.'
" We got into a hansom, drove to an address in May-
fair, and on the way I strove to improve the occasion,
but Tree would talk of nothing but himself as
Othello, and I could not get a word in edgeways. When
we got out, Tree paid the driver too much, and as I
drew breath for a final effort, he placed two limp
fingers affectionately below my collar and murmured :
" ' What a beautiful tie ! ' then bounded up the steps
and disappeared."
CHAPTER XIII
ABOUT H. G. WELLS, CONSTANCE COLLIER, SIR HERBERT
TREE, HAROLD BEGBIE AND SIR GERALD DU MAURIER
this man Wells," said the charwoman,
who was assisting to put my shelves in
order. " Whatever did he want to write
so many books for ? "
Thus may a genius be blamed by a slut, but there is
great preponderance of Wells amongst my cherished
volumes, which include nearly all he has written, many
of these being inscribed with absurd drawings and
inappropriate testimonials to our mutual affection,
which seems to grow by what it does not feed on, being
the more emphatically expressed when we do not meet.
These times I do not often see Wells in propria
persona if he has one. His is a programme of here
to-day and gone to-morrow over diverse countries and
continents, for he is liable to be called upon to re-
adjust the affairs of Russia whilst he waits there for a
week, and to settle the international policies of Wash-
ington after dispelling the fogs in the English and
Irish Channels.
The poor overworked fellow is all the time most
obviously anxious to write novels peacefully at home
where dwell his incomparable helpmate and two sons to
prove that his educational theories are sound working
propositions.
My first meeting with Wells was many, many years
173
174 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
ago, when a little world was daring to blame him for
his too frank revelations in Ann Veronica, and I had
felt very sympathetic towards him for being mis-
understood by those who never understand genius
should be accorded special favour. Genius is rare, and
when genius, as in the case of H. G. Wells, is allied to
originality, to imagination, to industry and to science,
it must be permitted to wander a little down the by-
paths of its choice, while it should be sheltered from
the vulgar slanders uttered by the Peeping Toms, who
see the less the more they look.
When did I first meet Wells, who rapidly became to
me H. G., as so many who don't know him persistently
refer to him ? It was at the house of one of the
Wertheimers, made famous by the illuminating art of
J. S. Sargent, whose pictures of a large family of them
adorn their dining-room laughingly called " the Sar-
gents' Mess." Anyway I approached him familiarly
enough, being so well read in him I felt he was an old
acquaintance, and we were waiting together for our
dear missing hostess, whose preferred practice was
unpunctuality.
Wells was standing on the rug, his legs apart, his
hands restless, his glance alert.
" I know you are Wells, and I am very glad to meet
you."
He asked my name, to confess frankly he had never
heard it, when I boldly ventured :
" Don't mind about me ; talk about yourself. Tell
me of your next book."
Wells' ultra-blue eyes glared at me.
" I would as soon take off my clothes," was an
astonishing answer to herald friendship.
ABOUT H. G. WELLS & OTHERS 175
I went one day to hear Wells lecture at some club
or another in Oxford Street, the subject being " The
first duty of a writer/' which he held to be the impres-
sion of your times upon your books, the stamp of
contemporary life upon all your pages. He has wan-
dered far since then, any dutiful limitations being dis-
regarded in the Outline of History which has come
into its stupendous existence.
After the lecture at tea-time it was amusing to hear
Wells tell that he had been stopped on his passage-way
by a clergyman, who assailed him, " I have enjoyed
very much hearing you speak, Mr. Wells, and I have
wanted for a long time to meet you, but in spite of
what you have said just now I cannot find any justifi-
cation for your book The Yoke"
The dear old gentleman had mixed up H. Wales
with H. G. Wells, and the contention of the former had
been that he might claim as a legitimate subject for
public reading the love of a mother, so protectively
overwhelming that it had urged her to the sacrifice
of herself rather than her son should brave the
consequences of the more casual temptation.
H. G. was horrified to be thus confounded, but was
persuaded to see the fun of it. You can generally
persuade him to see the fun of anything, that is what
is so jolly about him, always genial, ready to please
and be pleased, never self-important. It is impossible
to feel as stupid in his company as you know yourself
out of it. He is more stimulating than the best tonic
ever concocted in the best laboratory, while Coue* with
his gospels is a mere fool to him as restorative ; even
the least acute may well count him possessed of twin
pituitary glands.
176 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
A concluding virtue to add to his catalogue is his
prompt reply to letters, and even whilst he was in
America, where I sent him congratulatory word upon
his dignified exit from the trammels of super editing
while I finished my letter with, " Would you not like
to write the preface to my book ? " he replied by
return of mail and all characteristically, " No prefaces,
darling, beauty unadorned is adorned the most.
Love, H. G."
That is the best of Wells, he will write such com-
promising notes. I take a sheaf of his cards from a
bundle, hoping to find one at least which will not give
away the unquestionable fact of our mutual devotion.
Each resembles the other.
" Beloved, I am working and working like God,
but I shall see you soon. H. G."
" Dearly beloved, just back from Russia, and I must
sleep for a week. My car stands outside this afternoon
at six all saddled and bridled. You have my heart,
and I am all yours. H. G."
Both these communications have I am sure been
posted by his wife called Jane, because her name is
Catherine, who is one of the dearest little women, and
so clever in her wide knowledge of her husband, and
certainly very pretty, with a nice taste in clothes ; and
happily regarding me as I am, amongst the most
devoted of H. G.'s many admirers, without the least
inclination to play with him the deplorable antics of a
grey kitten.
I seem to be in a bad way, for I find so much excuse
to like my friends. Then after all, perhaps I should
H. G. WELLS
To face page 176
ABOUT H. G. WELLS & OTHERS 177
not have selected them had I not found some induce-
ment. Dozens of them crowd upon my mind, each
possessed of some quality or another, so that I am
driven to quote from Bolingbroke in Richard II, " I
count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul
remembering my good friends. " I don't believe
I am deserving of the verdict, " She has not an
enemy in the world, but her friends don't like her,"
I am sure they do, but perhaps they won't after this
book is published. Hope and despair are in the
thought, and since I am a confirmed Londoner I fear
that they may come along and break my windows with
my heart by stones to testify to their disapproval.
A constant absentee who contrives to retain the
affection nevertheless or because, is Constance Collier,
who has a well-developed talent for friendship, and
not even her many years' absence in America and her
prolonged wanderings in the provinces of England
succeed in obliterating her from the mind. All hail
and welcome seem to be attached to her. Everyone is
always glad to see her. She never loses her place in
our affection, although her presence is so deliberately
intermittent we feel glad of it. It is a very handsome
presence too which may account in a measure for our
joy at its approach, and I was looking at her recently
while she was stretched upon my sofa resting between
two performances, and I was wondering whence had
come the general impression that she is a Jewess.
1 You haven't really any Jewish blood in your veins
at all, have you, Connie ? " and she assured me none,
whilst declaring that she should have had some
gratification in being found guilty.
" Why not, indeed, when Sarah Bernhardt, Rachael,
1 78 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Lily Hanbury and Julia Neilson have encouraged me
to think that Jewish blood is no detriment to trium-
phant success in the art of acting ? "
' What is the favourite part you have ever played ? "
I fell irresistibly into the interviewer's attitude.
" Peter Ibbetson. For years and years I dreamt of
it and wanted to play it, and chafed at my inability
until at His Majesty's Theatre I got the chance at that
Ail-Star Matinee which you should recollect, if you
don't, included Clara Butt's first appearance on the
legitimate stage and Lilian Braithwaite with Owen
Nares to complete a cast quite remarkable."
" Are you serious in telling me that you preferred
this experiment, which I know you repeated trium-
phantly in America, to the classic Shakespearean
characters you played with Tree, or your vulgar tour
deforce as Nancy in Oliver Twist? "
!' Confession is bad for the body," laughed Con-
stance, " but it was always wonderful to me to act with
Tree. I had the greatest admiration for him, loved
every fault of him, and perhaps he had a few. The
fairy imaginative side of him appealed to me. I have
known him do such fantastic things. Conceive him
with a manager defaulting from the till and fleeing from
justice with his detectives in pursuit, while Tree having
ascertained his whereabouts forwards the criminal a
large cheque so that he might escape arrest from
the police he had sent to seize him. That was
Tree."
" Tree was subject," she said, with her eyes in the
past, " to moods. I recall him violently resentful of
a thief in office who had filched from his wardrobe a
splendid pair of black velvet curtains painted with
ABOUT H. G. WELLS & OTHERS 179
flames to surround Ulysses in hell. With much diffi-
culty these were traced to a second-hand clothes
dealer in Whitechapel where we journeyed one Sunday
morning to retrieve them, but, alas for the flames of
hell painted on black velvet ! They had been sold, and
were playing the part of Sabbatarian suits to half a
dozen little boys we met in their full glory. Tree
admired them immensely and refused with anger the
proposition of their financial equivalent."
My personal acquaintance with Tree was compara-
tively slight, but I recollect one special occasion of his
playing my host in the grill-room of the Carlton at the
time he was rehearsing for The School for Scandal, and
he brought from his pocket the copy from which
he was learning his part, telling me it had been
presented to him by an old lady, while he showed me
annotations in the margin made by Kean and by Irving.
Incidentally I supped with him admirably well. He
was always a most generous host, would give me on
demand the Royal box at His Majesty's Theatre, and
when he was playing Peggotty and Micawber he came
and sat awhile with me. Once when I conveyed
H. G. Wells and his two young sons to witness
Richard //, Tree sent for us all to come behind the
scenes, and there was Tree at his very best in the
company of children, who adored him naturally and
whom he understood completely.
At the house of Arthur Bourchier when they were
playing Henry VIII, Tree delivered himself of the jest,
" I and Bourchier are Gag and May gag," in cheery
acknowledgment of Bourchier's grins which never grew
as his clothes and his beard might have, on Holbein's
presentations of that polygamous pet.
i8o MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Tree looked at me that night as if prophetically.
" Why don't you write a book ? "
" Why should I ? " I protested modestly.
" Just to call it arriere-pensees"
But what a strange medley of creatures it has been
my lot to encounter, and in approaching Harold Begbie
I am inclined to say with the youngest of us, " Thank
God for my good dinner " — feast almost would be a
more appropriate word with so mixed a menu to
acknowledge.
" Love is the bridge between the two worlds."
When Harold Begbie said this to me I was in the
depths of despair, and I do not fancy he had the least
idea what spiritual comfort his words brought to me
then, and bring me yet.
Whatever part Harold Begbie may choose to play in
life, he is a born priest, and he holds with the Greeks
that all writing should be helpful and creative. I have
met him and known him under many different circum-
stances, for he is an active man of affairs, but I never
lose sight of him as a potential saviour of souls. In-
deed his written and his spoken lines have done much
to justify me in this belief, albeit there is a recreative
side to him, and he loves wit. He has the knack of
easy companionship, but I never know why he drifted
complacently into mine for he is mainly serious. I
have spent days with him down in his own home in
the country, where a fine glass window is a shrine to
the memory of a dear dead daughter, and where he
dwells often upon his sad parting with her, but with
no pang, always with increasing sweetness and the
certainty of their reunion. I have sat with him in his
study talking of literature and of journalism at which
ABOUT H. G. WELLS & HAROLD BEGBIEliSi
he is adept, quickest and most accurate writer, with
scenery included, and I have remonstrated with him
severely upon his tenets of comfort without servants
and his immovable conviction that domesticity is the
better part of women.
Yet, on this last point, why should I seek to inter-
fere ? His wife is the happiest of wives, and his three
girls are only too ready to help their father, whilst he
is as anxious to encourage them in their diverse am-
bitions. One daughter, with a ferret in her left-hand
pocket, is as assured of his interest as another occupied
with composing charming poems, or a third with no
other demand than his personal tendance upon her
two new goats, and always he is conscious of the minis-
trations of their beloved mother.
I once initiated Harold Begbie into the delights of
a dress rehearsal of Peter Ibbetson with luncheon to
follow in the company of Constance Collier the heroine,
and subsequently we all went out to supper together.
But the theatre is not the righteous atmosphere for
him, of course he must have his ambitions — what living
author has not ? — to write a good play. However, he is
possessed of many other aims, and to him is attributed
ten per cent of the books published anonymously.
" I don't believe he exists. I am sure he is a syndi-
cate, " I am accused when I talk of him.
" How perverse of you, Harold," I say, " not to put
your name boldly to your works — ' The M.. with a
D.. ,' ' L without S..,' and ' P d W s'
might be so reasonably allied. "
Harold Begbie has to his best credit much literature
in aid of the Church Army, the Salvation Army, Dr.
Barnardo's Homes, the Ragged School Union, and at
1 82 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
least a mile of print demonstrating his ability and will
to achieve what is possible on the philanthropic path.
He spares no personal trouble in his pursuit of the
fitting and unfitting subject, and practically he does
much which I know he would hate to be mentioned.
He used to write regularly for the daily press on
industrial, social and theological questions, and he has
journeyed from the North to the South of England to
investigate factories and the conditions of working
people.
Many amusing and topical novels bear his signature,
and not a few of his poems go to the glory of many
causes. So truly he may be acclaimed industrious as
well as able, and often I am vexed that he should
prefer to live in a distant Dorset and send me such
unrepentant letter as this :
;< I doubt if we shall visit London for many months.
I swore an oath in the train that I would never go
another journey, and truly if the gods provide me with
work enough to live on this hill-top, this cliff-top, I
think I shall never budge a mile away.
Perhaps you will come to Swanage, or, if that is too
blusterous, to Bournemouth, where the sun shines and
the east wind is verboten. If so, we will meet and dis-
cuss this good world.
And how good it is, Eliza, when we possess a big
deep chair and shelves all round us crowded with books.
I don't want to write any more ; but write I must, if
only to buy books. I want to read, and read and read,
sometimes going out to look at the sea, and sometimes
looking up to choose the star I wish to inhabit when I
quit this pretty planet. There is this great consolation
ABOUT SIR GERALD DU MAURIER 183
in age, it teaches us how simple are the things that
really minister to profound happiness. I could write
an ode to a Porcelain bath and a lyric to a glass of
Chateau Leoville Barton.
God rest you merry. We all send affectionate good
wishes. H.B."
I am tempted to wish he would diverge from his too
conscientious courses. I should like to find him exe-
cuting a mild fox trot on the roof of the Criterion ; and,
by the way, I wonder how he could bear the accurate
information that professional dancing has been a chosen
vocation of one gifted, handsome grandson of General
Booth. The best-laid ancestral schemes have surely
here gone sadly astray.
I cannot find anything more true to say of Sir Gerald
du Maurier than that Irving would have been proud of
him. As an actor who is a gentleman, who works
honourably and "industriously for (his calling, who
sports steadfastly for the good of his golf average, and
works assiduously for the advantage of his art, there is
none other to excel him, and he confutes every accu-
sation of the carelessness of the theatrical manager by
replying at once to the receipt of any manuscript or any
letter of demand which may reach him.
He never boasts of the fact nor of any other but of
his beautiful children. He does not often drive his
motors to destruction, and he is an indefatigable
chauffeur, and he bears calmly with a daughter on each
knee, another at the side of him, and a wife whom he
continues to admire, the many feminine advances
towards his sentimental attention.
What an Admirable Crichton in which play now I
1 84 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
come to think of it he first met his wife, Muriel
Beaumont, who still retains by some unrevealed secret,
but I suspect just happiness, the bright look of her
girlhood.
" If I belong anywhere," said Gerald to me one day
while we were lunching together previous to a matinee
in Leicester Square, " it is to Hampstead, where my
father lived and worked. " He has a deep-seated
reverence for his famous father, George du Maurier,
and much devotion indeed for all his family.
Anyone would want to belong to the house in Hamp-
stead which Gerald now occupies, dated eighteenth
century, and skilfully persuaded to look it, with its
stone-paved courtyard, wide hall and broad carved
staircase, and small-paned windows looking out upon
smooth lawns.
But to me Gerald's supremest virtue — and again I
transgress by mentioning he has any — is my know-
ledge that he will never play Hamlet.
He is our king of comedy acting, legitimate successor
to Wyndham, contemporary hero with Hawtrey, and
unless he is tempted into some further crimes like
Raffles, he threatens to remain a merry monarch for
all to survey.
But little vanity goes to him, and he told me an
amusing anecdote which proves it.
" After I had been ten years at Wyndham 's as actor-
manager, with my rather long name emblazoned across
the front of the theatre, one day when we were rehears-
ing Dear Brutus I suddenly remembered that I wanted
to rehearse with a pipe. There was nobody about, so
I ran out myself to a tobacconist's immediately oppo-
site the front of the theatre.
ABOUT SIR GERALD DU MAURIER 185
" The owner of the shop was very polite, and chose
a very nice pipe for me (being a cigarette smoker I put
myself in his hands), and feeling in my pocket for the
money to pay for it, I found I had literally not a penny.
I said would he mind if I sent the money across. He
said, * Where from?' I said, * The theatre.' He
queried, ' What theatre ? ' * Wyndham's,' I replied.
He looked doubtfully at me for a moment and asked,
' What's your name ? ' I told him. He thought for a
minute and said, ' Well, it is a new one to me.' So I
agreed, ' Oh, very well,' and I went across and got the
money from the Box Office and came back with the
pipe.
" I told the stage-manager about it, remarking, * It is
extraordinary how unobservant people are, that shop
has been there ever since I have been at this theatre.'
He said with rather a sly smile, * What's the name of
it ? ' I replied, ' I don't know.' "
CHAPTER XIV
ABOUT W. L. COURTNEY, MARY FULTON AND
GEORGE MOORE
I CONFESS to the convention of being at home
on Sunday afternoons where the circle ever
widens, and I hasten to mention that I have no
desire to deserve that it should be said of me, " She
thought she had founded a salon, but she had really
opened a teashop."
But I can proclaim as fact that no Sunday is con-
sidered complete unless four o'clock finds W. L.
Courtney ensconced in the corner of the sofa.
I believe that half of my visitors come on purpose
to meet him ; I have noticed that not a few will watch
the door until his arrival in the room which, however,
takes place some moments after his knock at the door
because he will stop upon the stairs to say amiable
words to my handsome housekeeper, Mrs. King, who
should be written down " superior," for she owned as
grandfather a founder of one of the great soap factories ;
but perhaps she is more important to us for her skill
at frying fish in oil according to the Jewish fashion.
I cannot remember where and when I first met
W. L. Courtney, but I suspect that it was at a theatre,
for I am an irreclaimable playgoer, and for years he
was dramatic critic to the Daily Telegraph.
Many a long — a very long — evening I have spent in
186
ABOUT W. L. COURTNEY & G. MOORE 187
some seat near to his, and many a short — a too short —
morning later we have passed on the Thames, which
is a favourite haunt for us both. Sculling was amongst
his athletic activities, though he would as disdainfully
regard my comment on his prowess as he would my
frivolous observation on the becomingness of his
brass-buttoned blue coat and his faded pink Leander
cap.
Here recently our riparian inclination found us at
ease on cushioned chairs in pompous possession of a
launch at Bourne End, where R. C. Lehmann, Oxford
oarsman and celebrated coach at Oxford and Cambridge
and of University crews at Dublin, Berlin and Har-
vard, lives with a gracious wife, daughters and a young
son threatening to follow his father's footsteps on the
towing path to triumph on the waterways. During
tea with them in the shelter of the wide window which
looks upon the flower-girdled lawns, the girls told of
their content at Girton, and Mr. Courtney, all uncon-
sciously assuming the gown of the Don, showed
considerable interest on the classical side and some
concern for feminine intrusion with the oar, while
shuddering at the idea of women in shorts.
W. L. Courtney has always been as much interested
in sport as in the theatre, and both were early loves.
It was due to his intervention that Jowett consented
to allow dramatic performances at Oxford with the
wives and daughters of the citizens appearing in the
plays. Here with Arthur Bourchier he took his share
in establishing the O.U.D.S., an institution still flour-
ishing, and the archives chronicle that W. L. Courtney
played Bassanio to Bourchier's Shylock.
He and I share many tastes and possess many mutual
1 88 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
friends. Proudly I stood godmother to his delightful
book, In Search of Egeria, and we both count Norfolk
happy hunting ground in holiday time. When I was
there, a mere idler, he would go with his daughter for
that uninterrupted morning of work which the writer
is ever seeking and seldom securing. In the afternoons,
should the good golf of his desire prove unattainable,
we would walk at West Runton, or in Sheringham Park,
where once we stayed our footsteps under a great tree,
facing burly bushes of rhododendrons in red, pink and
purple profusion, and he read aloud his one-act play,
The Webs of Penelope, destined for Marion Terry.
His busy pen cannot resist always the lure of the
stage, and to his credit stand Kit Marlowe and Mark-
heim, adapted from R. L. Stevenson for H. B. Irving.
For him Lilian Braithwaite pleaded On the Side of the
Angels, and Mrs. Patrick Campbell gave her efforts to
Undine in London and the provinces.
W. L. Courtney prevails here on Sundays when
there is competition with maid and matron for the
pleasure of giving him his tea, although he protests
lazily he can get it himself, knowing well such conduct
would never be permitted.
In our argumentative moments — we are prone to
these even though they be buttered as thickly as the
crumpets — he displays a gentle tolerance for all pro-
pounded views, and no better chairman for a peace
conference could be imagined than " Bill/' as we most
of us dare to call him with an impertinence we recognise
when Lady Tree comes in to greet him, " Professor,
I am so glad to see you/' the address being well sanc-
tified in capital letters. I regret I do not more often
see Lady Tree. She is responsible for many of the
ABOUT W. L. COURTNEY & G. MOORE 189
best jests ; did she not announce when Sir Herbert
engaged that distinguished pair Ellen Terry and Mrs.
Kendal to play The Merry Wives of Windsor, " Herbert
is preserving ancient lights."
Did she not sum up existence, " Nothing comes off
in life except buttons," but I must not omit to mention
that I am really very jealous of her, because she writes
the most admirable articles upon dress, and she is
quite capable of materialising her statement, " Give
me a dozen yards of white crepe de Chine and I will
guarantee to make a gown which shall express any
century."
She is a most clever woman, and her interpolations
while she was acting in Diplomacy did something for
the reputation of Sardou as a humorist.
It was said of W. L. Courtney up at Oxford that
although he was a Don with due attribute of detached
dignity he was for ever an undergraduate at heart.
Strong characteristics do not disappear, they develope,
he remains an undergraduate at heart, and in any
company where he may be — he inclines towards the
ladies — you will find the youngest clustering around
him, and it must be admitted that he talks to them with
more obvious pleasure than he will to his contempor-
aries, even though these should tempt his memories
by allusion to his splendid waltzing in his prime.
At the Royal and Literary Societies, where he holds
potential position, Mr. Courtney lectures regularly
upon many subjects from Euripides to Pinero, and he
contrives somehow to engage attention from an audi-
ence, however uninstructed.
As a critic W. L. Courtney has the rare gift of not
only realising what the author accomplishes, but what
MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
it had been his intention to accomplish. His know-
ledge is based on the classics which are in him, and he
is an encyclopaedia of information ; a man of learning
and of teaching, and above all enchantingly human
and everlastingly young, turning more gladly now to
the lighter side of things, and admitting that beauty
makes irresistible appeal to him. Nobody is a more
gracious guest, and considering his intellectual equip-
ment his adaptability to every sort of individual is
amazing.
Under his encouragement I have contributed to
The Fortnightly Review, and joined a symposium on
the New Woman invited by the Daily Telegraph.
Further I venture.
" Dare I write about you, the real you, in my book ? "
and with a shrug of submission to the inevitable he
replies, " I suppose I must bear it."
It is difficult to do justice to him, for he is a man of
many sides, and whilst he is ever the courtly urbane
gentleman with a touch of Colonel Newcome about him
and never free from the old academic traditions, he is
persistently alert for to-morrow. He is of an unfalter-
ing faith, and his intimacy with the Scriptures to which
The Literary Man's Bible testifies is as profound as his
respect for them ; his appreciation of the supreme
beauty of the writing in Isaiah and the Song of
Solomon never swerves, and his most consoling
philosophy preaches :
" Life is a shedding of leaves, " an axiom which
happily has as yet no significance for that merry being
Mary Fulton, who is a frequent intruder near by
W. L.'s seat upon the sofa here.
Head of copper, heart of gold, intellect of steel, but
W. L. COURTNEY, M.A., LL.D.
To face page 190
ABOUT W. L. COURTNEY & OTHERS 191
nothing else metallic goes to the author of Blight and
The Plough, a soft resilient creature who should be
ashamed of her persisting idleness, for she has un-
doubted ability to enter permanently into the field of
fiction, yet bides her time slothfully, even while St.
John Ervine is here to assure us that of all literary
expression the novel is most meet for the lazy.
" Everybody writes, why must I ? " says Mary-
Fulton when I try to stem the flood of her frivolity,
of her wander lust and her athletic proclivities. Per-
haps she has reason in her opinion that youth must
not be baulked, and she is as adorably youthful as she is
persuasively pretty, while at least she is a hard reader,
but she is sure that Robinson Crusoe was a greater
hero than Hannibal, and is best persuaded of the charm
of continental literature with Anatole France to the
fore.
" Are you mystic ? " says the imaginative man as he
looks into her mischievous eyes as men will, and she
illustrates Rudyard Kipling's theory that " the female of
the species is more deadly than the male " ; but of course
she is not mystic, although her Irish blood jumps
gladly to the idea. She is really a most material little
person, with an infinite capacity for enjoyment, served
with surplus cash. She is glad to be alive at twenty-
six with every conceivable advantage to her name,
with the husband of her early choice and a dear child
to adore. She is a joyous circumstance, and her nice
red head pokes into my room once a day, for she lives
next door, and since she is a practising pianist I am
delighted to welcome her absence from home. Sheer
joy goes to her while she is relating with native wit
tales of her adventures, real and fictitious, now and
192 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
again inadvertently confessing to her charity and prac-
tical pity for the weakness of others less fortunate than
herself. She will write yet, and well, the doom is
upon her, but now she shares with me an incorrigibly
flippant outlook upon grave subjects.
I like to cast myself as the clown, however serious
may be my company, and although George Moore
exercises great influence upon me he has never been
able to persuade me that the jest is not the highest
form of mental exercise. On Sundays in my room no
one watches the door more anxiously for W. L. Court-
ney than does George Moore, who is possessed of ad-
miration not alone for his skill as critic and editor, but
for his value as universal provider of agreeable con-
versation.
It is easy to suspect the impatience of George Moore
at W. L. Courtney's great inclination towards triviali-
ties rather than towards earnest argument about
literature.
George Moore stands always for literature, he is
not deeply concerned with anything else, and it is cer-
tain that personalities and politics are alike amongst
his indifferences. On pictures he has excuse to be
didactic, for he knows much about them, and has de-
clared " painting to be the most indiscreet of all the
arts." Yet he decided that Mona Lisa came into her
possession of eternal life through the immortality of
Pater's prose.
He is sensitive to music, and in the full flight of his
enthusiasm dogmatised " to hear Wagner one must
hear him where he chooses to be heard, one has to
leave all things and follow him to Bayreuth."
Yet when there he records as his first thought on
ABOUT W. L. COURTNEY & G. MOORE 193
being presented to Madame Wagner in her late fifties,
" Am I going to run away with her ? "
He claims as virtue that he is the only Irishman who
never made a speech, but he can be very eloquent
when interested in his topic, while he is perennially in
earnest, whether tilting at his indulgent friend Edmund
Gosse, or abusing cab whistles, or deploring the casual
invitation, or resenting the natural habit of the natural
dog.
He is ever of original and unusual thought, which
he dresses and undresses in unusual words. His con-
clusions are unexpected, and I recall him, in the
earlier days of the war, waving the subject out of his
sight and hearing as being too unpleasant to contem-
plate or to discuss.
" All this chattering during a storm in a dark forest
must cease and the sun must come out, and beautiful
naked nymphs will go down to bathe in the bright
waters."
His slightest word-pictures even of a pain in his
chest eased by a parlourmaid and a poultice, are so
vividly incised that they sink as indelibly into the
memory as his wonderful account of his passage
across the Irish Channel and his historic search for
pyjamas.
" George/' I make the announcement with fear, " I
am going to write a book about myself/'
" Eliza/' he said with a cautionary hand, " write it
in English," and he continued with apologetic inten-
tion, '" you know the language you speak is not
English."
I admitted the hard judgment with a soft conscious-
ness that I am very fond of George Moore, and
i94 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
although he persists in being always a loiterer on the
lowlands of love, I am convinced that he deeply re-
spects and admires woman. Has he not written,
1 Without women we should be all reasonable, there
would be no instinct. And a reasonable world — what
would it be like ? A garden without flowers, music
without melody. "
His eyes gleam, his white hair drops a shade lower
on to his brow, and he chortles into his chin whilst he
encourages me :
" You must tell all about the men who have pro-
posed to you." I protest that this might fill a line
rather than a volume, for I surmise that it was I who,
in the words of Shy lock to Tubal, first made suggestion
to the dark and diffident lover who became my husband,
" Meet me at our Synagogue."
" No one has proposed to me anything — except that
they should read to me from a manuscript of their own
making."
I entreat George Moore's credence.
" I will never believe it," and with subtle flattery he
pursues the phantom of my far-reaching fascination ;
but this is merely pretty George's way. To feed the
gluttonous vanity of woman he pretends that he thinks
she is a compendium of conquests and that each move
in all her games might be punctuated justly with a line
of asterisks.
After I had known George Moore in those days at
my brother's when " Pan " was born, and the Sporting
Times was in full bloom, he went again to live in France
and in Ireland, and we lost each other while Julia and
he had some controversy about Doctor Phillips.
The wrongs and rights of the dispute are of small
ABOUT W. L. COURTNEY & G. MOORE 195
matter, but to Julia quite inadvertently, George Moore
owed something of the details of the tragedy of Esther
Waters.
I remember sitting with them together in an old
vicarage garden at Staines whilst he read to us the first
chapter of this book which was destined to become his
most popular. He is an indefatigable worker towards
his own high standard, and although he may discuss
what he will write, he deprecates any praise of what he
has written. No trouble has ever been too much for
George Moore to take to secure accurate information.
In that long ago he intrigued for an interview with a
resident wet-nurse, who had fallen from grace to
Queen Charlotte's hospital. " Une petite faute," he
muttered as he followed her across the lawn.
I found George Moore again after many days when
I cast him upon the waters of Babylon, to receive later
a record of a ride on an Arab steed neither swift nor
sure ; he told vividly of rubble, rubble, rubble over a
valley up a winding path to the monastery where the
Abbe had stood to receive him, and he looked
around, and shut his eyes and begged them to
remember.
In a copy of The Brook Kerith which provoked this
journey he wrote :
" MY DEAR ELIZA,
If you had not encouraged my departure for
Palestine, and I was very unwilling to go, this book
would not have been written.
With very many thanks, I remain,
Your affectionate old friend,
GEORGE MOORE."
196 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
It is a mere cliche now to observe that he is our
greatest master of English narrative prose, this being
declared alike by the few able to recognise its truth
and the many who have never turned a page he has
written. I might be guilty of not being amongst the
first, but I have read most of his writings and listened
to him whilst he has projected many others not yet
consigned to the printed page. Rumour declares his
proof corrections more extensive than his manuscripts,
whilst his practice of writing and rewriting, publishing
and republishing is amongst the chances I get to chaff
him, that in his interest I may become a collector of
last editions.
George Moore may take a lenient view of my
levity, whilst we sit together after other guests
have departed, his face alight in the glow of the
fire, and all tolerant of my ignorance with due
regard for my prejudices, he will inform me lightly
in the French classics. He may even expurgate Jean
Jacques Rousseau and bowdlerise Balzac for my better
instruction.
He is without guile, properly understood by a very
few, and he will tell me how much he likes Jews while
explaining that he is attached to me because I possess
none of their traditional features.
He has written " that we do not grieve for the dead
because they have been deprived of the pleasures of
this life, but because of our own loss."
So that when he said to me, " You must not be ill
because I shall miss you very much," I am assured of
his simple egotism and proud to believe his words to
be true.
" Eliza," he said, turning back from the door on the
ABOUT W. L. COURTNEY & G. MOORE 197
day I announced my book to him, and while advancing
gravely under the chandelier, " light writing need not
be bad writing ; why don't you write like Sterne or
Heine ? "
Ah ! why don't I ?
CHAPTER XV
ABOUT LILIAN BRAITHWAITE, SIR GEORGE AND LADY
ALEXANDER, ISIDORE DE LARA, AND ROBERT BENNETT
" 1L yf^ARRIED ? Nonsense/' I said to my in-
%/| former, who persisted.
JL V JL " Oh yes, a year ago."
Case of sixteen and just out of the nursery here, I
decided.
Such a pretty young thing was Lilian Braithwaite
when she first danced into my sight at a ball at the
Empress Rooms, where she was wearing a fancy dress
of the Moorish type, and her profile beneath a little
turban of red and gold gave my aesthetic sense no little
satisfaction.
;t Same profile ? " asked Lilian, smiling at me when
I recalled our initial meeting.
" Exactly similar, you haven't altered at all."
" Oh, well I ought to have, but you have seen me
so frequently you would not have noticed it, and
if you had, you are so amiable you would not have
mentioned it."
Hard-headed young woman that ! not sufficiently
susceptible to adulation, being overfed perhaps, as
actress and philanthropist, for her career spells much
success, and the force of her character can be recog-
nised to the benefit of many professional movements.
When necessary she plays herfpart as chairman, orator
198
ABOUT SIR GEORGE ALEXANDER 199
and organiser, and it is amongst theatrical beliefs that
she is a mascot. Wherever she acts the long run can
be confidently anticipated, but for me whatever special
pleading she may urge in the Bill of Divorcement
for happiness minus a mad husband, her best work
is done on the classic comedy side.
Her Lady Teazle and her Portia are spontaneously
joyous to my humour, but there is yet to my regret
the absence of her Beatrice from London presenta-
tion, even whilst I remember with respect the
calm and soothing beauty of her Madonna in The
Miracle.
She is a complex creature is Lilian Braithwaite, firm
in her opinions and her conduct, upright to the last
letter of the word, strong despite the ethereal touch to
her beauty, and she must be accorded recognition as a
good loser, which is after all an unusual quality to be
possessed by an artist.
She is a sportswoman, proving it bravely in her
married life, and no less conspicuously when in all
generosity she joined me to meet with utter disaster,
in the only trading enterprise I ever undertook. The
whole conduct of the affairs of this was placed with me,
and was very soon supported by the voluntary, even
insistent contribution of a bundle of bad debts from
many of my most fervent admirers, who would bring
all their friends to demand lowered prices by reason
of their personal acquaintanceship. Feminine friends
may play the deuce in shopkeeping by the amateur !
Madame Mauve, Ltd., which was dedicated to acces-
sories before the fact of undressing did not at any time
reach the prosperity I prophesied as inevitable, and it
most clearly failed to deserve any during war-time
200 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
when uniforms were the only wear and the best-laid
lingerie was at a wholesale discount. Up the stairs
came the bailiff, down the windows went the shutters,
and it is splendid to relate that no one member of
the little band of feminine financiers who had so hope-
fully and faithfully planked down their money blamed
the other, or cast a stone of reproach at their incom-
petent managing director. That was a fine feat in
womanly reticence, and Lilian Braithwaite with
Gertrude Kingston should receive some special order
of merit for their exemplary patience, and the
generosity extended with a gentle sympathy for me,
the offender-in-chief, with the women's army perhaps
as the plausible auxiliary to the final annihilation
of my hopes.
I always associate Lilian Braithwaite in my mind
with the St. James's Theatre, for during some long
time she was leading lady there with Alexander, whose
adorers were legion, whether he produced romantic or
psychological drama ; and there is no doubt that in
giving us The Second Mrs. Tanqueray he qualified and
passed with honours as a pioneer in presentation
of the lady with a lurid past and a disconnected
present.
Alexander was under the management of Irving for
some time, going straight to him from the Kendals to
play Caleb Deecie, the blind man, in The Two Roses,
and he was wont to be very amusing about his
experiences during his first rehearsals at the Lyceum.
" Not quite so much Piccadilly, my boy," Irving
would say to him when, clad with his customary care,
he walked with fashionable swing across the boards.
" Not quite so much Piccadilly," Alexander would
ABOUT SIR GEORGE ALEXANDER 201
repeat this with great gusto, whilst he would also tell
of a valuable lesson given to him when he was hurriedly
rattling through his words as Faust.
" No, no, Alexander, that won't do, too quick, too
quick, think of the little boy in the back of the gallery
who has paid his sixpence to hear you. You should
always think of him, and be quite sure that he does
hear you."
Comment on the perennial value of such teaching
would be superfluous.
Alexander was a fine producer, and no theatre was
ever conducted with more complete decorum than was
St. James's under his management, where many fine
actors progressed to fame. Fred and Julia Neilson,
H. B. Irving, H. V. Esmond and Fay Davis are amongst
the few I think of hurriedly. He took infinite pains
with the younger members of his company, and he was
a man of aspiration and ideals of every kind, tempered,
however, with a strange racial caution.
He obtained more uninterrupted success than most
managers, and I have heard a lady enthusiastically
declare that :
" So long as any act in any comedy shows me
Alexander with a broad red ribbon across his evening
waistcoat I shall go and hear him once a week."
But although I might have held that sentiment, I fell
under his displeasure inadvertently, but deservedly.
Somehow or another I appear to have collected
dramatic critics, the desire to do so owing with its
accomplishment to my constant appearance at all the
first performances of plays. I was grateful for the
chance to hobnob with anyone attached to a theatre,
but my gossiping habits led me sadly into disgrace,
202 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
and through that disgrace most happily to the intimate
friendship of George Alexander.
It was on the first night of that ill-treated drama
Guy Domville by Henry James that I might have been
heard talking volubly to old Joseph Knight, doyen of
the critics then, and chaffed so aptly when he made
a super-autobiographical speech at a public dinner.
" Joe Knight had a thousand Fs."
George Alexander wrote to me protesting against
my adverse prattle, whilst acknowledging that he
realised I had no conception what harm might be done
in uttering thus loudly amidst a crowd of newspaper
reporters.
I was deeply penitent and received the reward in
excess of my sin.
" Will you come to breakfast at eleven o'clock
to-morrow ? >:
Many times I enjoyed hospitality from Alexander
and a never-failing welcome from his wife.
Lady Alexander remains a very well-known figure hi
social life, ringing the changes of fashion in black and
white and grey, which she affects exclusively without
the least monotony. In many benevolent causes she
sells programmes, heading her bevy of beautiful
assistants with such elaborate elegance that we call
her affectionately " our chief bridesmaid."
The way she raked in the shekels during the war
was wonderful ; no one could resist her appeal, and
she would make as much as two hundred to five hun-
dred pounds in an afternoon. She was indeed so well
recognised as Jill Sheppard of the road to order " stand
and deliver cash " that once when she was sitting in
a corner at the Coliseum upon no marauding intent
ABOUT SIR GEORGE ALEXANDER 203
but merely to hear Alexander play in Howard and
Son, three people upon seeing her put their hands in
their pockets.
I have heard it mentioned that when she was on
the most active service a tame capitalist gave her
twenty pounds for a programme with a piteous
request, " Do leave me twopence for my bus fare
home."
The last time Alexander appeared on the stage he
gave a beautiful study of The Aristocrat in the French
Revolution, and there is evidence that he never sus-
pected himself to be seriously ill, for he acquired all
rights in Bernstein's last drama during the summer
before he died.
I have often sat with Alexander between the acts in
the ante-room to his dressing-room, whence he once
emerged to give me a little terra-cotta bust of Irving,
and to show me a larger one he possessed in bronze,
a miniature of the life-size marble which the Earl of
Plymouth had bought from Hampton. This bust is
quite the best plastic likeness of Irving I have seen,
and it was done after two sittings, and destined to
form part of the big Victorian memorial group now
standing in the town of Lancaster.
Alexander shared with Edward Terry, Augustus
Harris and Walter Reynolds the responsibility of being
the only men connected with the stage who took a
practical part in municipal affairs. Alexander's elec-
tion to the London County Council marked an epoch
in new and valuable regulations and reforms, and he
became the chairman of the Parks Committee with
threats of retirement altogether from the stage, and
an acceptance of an offered seat in Parliament.
204 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
His untiring energies in these directions whilst he
was busy rehearsing and acting and producing plays
and managing his theatre, unquestionably laid the
foundation-stone of his mortal illness, which cul-
minated so distressfully at the beautiful house he had
built for himself in Hertfordshire overlooking those
fairy woods of Chorley.
I have much testimony to Alexander's affection for
me, signed photographs and innumerable letters, but
what held him and his wife and me eternally together
is the memory of that night when Irving was brought
from Bradford to temporary rest at his flat in
Stratton Street. There, Harry and Dorothea, Lau-
rence and Mabel, and the Alexanders and I sat watch-
ing through the hours. Alexander, like all who worked
for him, was deeply devoted to Irving.
As I stood by his side in the after years on the
widespreading loggia facing the cherry tree walk at
Chorley, the pity of his illness was almost unbearable.
No man ever looked more beautiful, but none could
see him and not understand the hopelessness of his
condition, and the courage which went to the gaiety
of his prediction that he would be at work again by
Christmas. I held his arm whilst we strolled a little
way down the path. He was very frail, yet walked
uprightly, not leaning on his stick, and elegant yet in
those immaculate grey tweed clothes, that irreproach-
able tie and the faultless collar which had been the
envy of all fashionable manhood in town. But there
was " not too much Piccadilly " then, and his white
hair fluttered just a little in the wind as I left him
standing in the porchway with his helpmate — no wife
was ever better deserving of that title — and his whim-
ABOUT SIR GEORGE ALEXANDER 205
sical smile to her and to me was unutterably sad.
I was so sure we should never meet again. Although
I wrote later when I was staying with the Irvings at
Harrow he was unable to receive me, and with my
love I had sent some cakes of unleavened bread which
I hoped he might be permitted to enjoy, just before
his pencilled word to me :
" MY DEAR MRS. ARIA — and mine to you (love I
mean) and grateful thanks for your kind thoughts of
me. I had my accountant here or I should have been
delighted to see you, though Harrow is a pretty long
way. No, I have had very few visitors, and have not
felt up to it. I have my ups and downs, at the moment
I am in the latter and sent to bed again. I expect
you are busy first-nighting. I have just consulted my
doctor. He tells me I may eat the box you send, but
not the contents. It shall sit by my bedside and I shall
look forward to the time when I can dive into it and
swallow the cakes with lots of butter. It won't be so
very long I hope ; I was delighted to see you, bless you.
Yours ever,
GEORGE ALEXANDER."
The beginning of my acquaintance with Isidore de
Lara was not more propitious than my initial intro-
duction to Sir George Alexander.
My ignorance of the art of music not being properly
concealed beneath a bump of reverence for it, I have
suspected that many go to church for the pleasure of
hearing themselves carol rather than for the better
part of prayer. However, I know I was badly to blame
when a kindly hostess frowned at me for giggling at
zo6 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
the significant emphasis in De Lara's beautiful voice
whilst he was singing " The Maid of Athens," but ere
we parted I had made amends. The Victorian era
took its music with great decorum ; it was considered
exaggerated and even immoral to display any intensity
of feeling while singing songs of love. De Lara was
the first artist in England to sing in English of love
as if he were really singing to the beloved without
hypocrisy or restraint.
He was The Great Lover in song, and it is amongst
his gratified ambitions as composer that his music
inspires love.
De Lara took himself and his ideals to the Continent,
where he made his reputation as writer of opera, and
a quarter of a century sped before I saw him again
after my unmannerly conduct condoned by me of me
as due to the hysterical habit of the young girl.
All involuntary is my detachment from music, and
my last active injustice towards it was that Czerny
study which led my father to decide that mathematics
should be my vocation. I have met in intimacy but few
musicians ; my early days were associated slightly with
Tosti, with Arthur Sullivan and Liza Lehmann, closely
with Charles K. Salaman, Frederick Co wen and with
Hope Temple, ballad writer and one of the prettiest
girls I ever saw, with much talent and bewitchment in
her to promote a propensity for being betrothed to
the well known in the land of harmony. She was suc-
cessively engaged to four of these, ultimately marrying
Andre Messager ; and she would commiserate with
me for being tone deaf, which, after all, is a misfortune
rather than a crime, and it has deprived me of con-
siderable pleasure " and of considerable pain " —
ISIDORE DE LARA
To face page 206
ABOUT ISIDORE DE LARA 207
whispers my tame cynic who is a confirmed highbrow
in the world of Art.
But I can find no consolation in this nor in my
kinship with the case of Doctor Johnson, nor in his
theory that of all noises music is the most disagreeable.
I sympathise with myself rather in my belief in
Shakespeare's verdict on those " who have no music
in their souls."
In writing of De Lara, therefore, I quote a few lines
from an opinion of that consummate critic Camille
Mauclair.
:< No manifestation in Europe during the last forty
years has left him indifferent ; he has always been a
student of the lyric stage, and his chief characteristics
are the Oriental colouring and a feverish expression of
passion which is unlike the violence of the ' morbid-
ezza ' of the romantic school, and resembles in no way
the coarse sexual exteriorisation of the Italian realists.
It is an expression of the heart, and is always the out-
come of an inspiration. He loves the stage, never
separating his music from the drama. He is master
of all the resources of the theatre ; he is a master of
melody. On the perfect blending of the voice and the
orchestra this composer attains a high degree of per-
fection. "
Ashamed I admit to a greater susceptibility to " The
Garden of Sleep " than to the finest passage of the
love duets in his acclaimed Messaline ; I remain more
capable of appreciating De Lara as a friend than as a
musician, but as a man he is elusive in his moods, as
varying as the really ever constant woman is supposed
to be. He is a capital talker and a willing ; but while
you think you have wholly enchained him and he is
2o8 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
beaming upon you with the benevolent mote, all unlike
the praying king in Hamlet, his thoughts fly up, his
words remain below. If you are observant you are
aware that mentally he has wandered away pregnant
with song on to some wild and open sea.
That he remains a child of nature is amongst his
charms ; he is never affected, he yawns when he is
sleepy and he goes home when he is bored, although
such gentle courtesy and grace accompany the yawning
and the going, it is easy to forgive him, even to set
about planning some social condition which may prove
more congenial to him.
Labelled and libelled in young youth, poseur > no one
was ever more simple and direct, suffering indeed from
super-sincerity. You are on to a good thing when you
enlist his partisanship for any cause, but if you are
merely a dawdler on the threshold of some scheme he
approves, beware of the forceful impetus of his
advocacy. He will drag you relentlessly along to
industry, to slavery may be, and inevitably to en-
thusiasm.
Devoting his energies during the war to needy
musicians, he gave 1400 concerts and delivered him-
self of some eloquence at each, making his special plea
the temporary divorce of German music from English
ears. Gallant campaigner as he is for British music,
he has now rescinded that absolute decree, confessing
his personal joy at the restitution, which goes to prove
that he is a sportsman as well as a patriot.
As a patriot he is double-hearted, owning France as
deep in his love as England ; never was a caricature
better deserved than the one perpetrated by Dulac,
who showed him in strong or rather light boxing gear,
ABOUT ISIDORE DE LARA 209
with the foremost foot sturdily planted in Paris and
the hindermost in London. But did not someone
write that " every Englishman of culture prefers to
live in France " ?
Although De Lara is a composer of music with no less
than eight operas to his credit, he is always a student
of literature, a philosopher who is no mere disciple,
but an advanced walker by the way of earnest thought,
and he is a fervid politician in three languages.
There is some cause to regret his glib efficiency in
those three languages, if you wish to enjoy his conver-
sation whilst you share a meal with him at a restaurant.
He is of so cosmopolitan a custom that he is known to
every foreign waiter in the room ; he gets cordial
welcome from each, whilst he orders his food in French,
his wine in Italian, his cigar in English, and by the
salaam of the Turkish coffee purveyor you may suspect
him of being no stranger to Oriental experience. In
every social gathering he is well met and largely indi-
vidual. Combatant first and courtier afterwards, he is
not inclined towards any stars of the stage nor possessed
of much partiality for the prima donna.
All artist though he is, he has no care for beautiful
belongings ; his domesticity is stronger in theory than
in practice ; as surroundings he is well content with a
piano, a large table, a deep easy-chair and some books,
while his favourite outside view is a mountain in full
snow — not always handy.
Men and women like De Lara for his candour and
his comradeship ; a fine man with a fine spirit, you are
conscious that he would if he could secure you to com-
fort and protect you against ill. However sad you
may have cause to be, his warm clasp of greeting tempts
210 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
you to hope and to a happy remembrance of those
words :
" What is between us two we know,
Take hands and let the whole world go."
" Love your editor as yourself so that your days
may be long in the land of his ruling " is a good enough
motto for the journalist, and some excuse goes to such
easy course with the literary director of Truth, Robert
Bennett, under whose amiable auspices I have worked
regularly these twelve years or more, and like Charley's
Aunt I am still running.
What a record of indulgence given, and of course
after this declaration more must inevitably follow ; but
really editors are (and I have suffered many madly) not
exactly angels, being better fitted for candidature in
an acknowledged executioners' class. So drastic they
may be when dealing with a sensitive contributor, so
capricious and so unmindful and completely indifferent
that the self-respecting chronicler hates to have a line
transferred or a comma lifted. Mr. Bennett is punc-
tilious in his apologies when he omits my most dearly
beloved paragraphs — but he omits them. The benign
and benevolent being who passes Mrs. A 's diary,
which counts weekly amongst my seven deadly sins,
should be exalted mightily as the very model of a
prime minister of print.
It is not for me to say how extremely well he writes
upon political and criminal — happy union ! — affairs ;
no weakness escapes his busy pen, for his mind is as
smart and dapper as his clothes, but despite his gentle
aspect, he is shrewd, and has thrown many challenges
to the unjust, the incompetent, and the dishonest in
ABOUT ROBERT BENNETT 211
high places, and met them bravely too in the Law
Courts and in his official arena in Westminster.
I may be prejudiced, but I am convinced that
no more courteous and kindly man ever sat in an
editorial chair than Robert Bennett, who doubtless
thanks his stars that I do not more often call to ask
for " some " in advance, though when I thus transgress
he wears for me perennially the nicest smile and in-
cidentally the nicest neckties of blue and white spotted
foulard.
He is possessed of an invincible desire to help
everybody, perverting Polonius, rather a borrower
than a lender be. He is not conspicuously attached
to usurers, and I am aware that he beams upon my
departure as gladly as upon my arrival, and I remember
gratefully that he has made my Christmas merry by
one bonus and my midsummer holiday the more
enjoyable by another. May he continue
" Long to reign o'er us
Not too censorious.'*
And I quote from him with a vexed vanity :
' With all respect to the rest of the female branch
of the profession, I consider that Emily Crawford
never had an equal for range, literary finish, individu-
ality and insight into men and things. And perhaps
the most admirable thing about her from the editorial
point of view — though I have known others who run
her close in this respect — was her unfailing precision
in the delivery of the ' copy ' when required, however
adverse the conditions might be.
The most remarkable example of this was when in
1914, at eighty years of age, she was driven from her
212 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
home at Senlis by the invading Hun ; she made her
way to Havre en route for England, and thence de-
spatched her batch of ' copy ' for next week's Truth,
evidently written on any odd scraps of paper that she
could get hold of at the moment, and apparently in
some restaurant or cabaret, where she had to use sand
instead of blotting-paper/'
:•-
SIR THOMAS BROCK, K.C.B.
DRAWN BY HIS SON EDMOND.
Reproduced by permission of " The Graphic"
To face page 212
CHAPTER XVI
ABOUT LETTERS AND POSSESSIONS
THERE is a famous lady who shall of course
be nameless, which she will of course hate,
now employed upon her Memoirs, and
reported to desire of her publishers sufficient space
to print all her love-letters. Some follies might be
revealed here, but not necessarily deserving of account.
So few know how to write love-letters, and the
science of love-making is rare too in England, but
easily recognised when of the expert superior order
learnt in France or Italy.
A pretty equestrian accompanied in the Row by
her riding-master was greeted by a well-known artist
in affection :
" How beautiful you look up there, " and at least
half a yard of compliment to follow.
Experienced riding-master, after the farewell had
been poetically and reluctantly accomplished, looked
at the departing figure with admiration, and com-
mented : A
" 'E do know 'ow to tell the tale, don't Je ? "
With those who would ever exalt yesterday above
to-day the belief obtains that with the art of wooing,
the art of letter-writing is dead : sheer calumny. It is
not even moribund, nor does it sleep. It is as alive as
the sculpture of Epstein, and the proletariat at play
213
214 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
under the brush of Nevinson, and it is indeed vastly
improved since the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies when by the pompous with a passion for the
prolix, correspondence flowed in elegant futility at the
greatest length on the least provocation, and no one
was safe from a screed of counsel or confidence or
complaint with meteorological interruptions.
It always enrages me to read the constant cry of the
bygone ladies for more letters from their husbands who
appeared to miss the rare posts with great regularity,
and for more frequent visits from reluctant lovers. The
travelling suitor or suited was an asset in those days not
properly appreciated. Happily we are less eager now,
or more reticent, but certainly we are briefer in our
methods of expressing ourselves, our longings, our
physical ills and our emotional crises.
With only a three-halfpenny stamp in the house we
have so accurately appraised the limit of essential
words that we can convey emotion with atmosphere
included upon a mere postcard.
The most sympathetic letter I ever read came from
a lay pen, and from no lover either, just from one
friend to another in sorrow, when a large bundle of
white lilac held tight to its stalk a card inscribed, " All
that I have and am is waiting to be called upon."
Of course the departure platform at railway stations
echoes with " write soon" and of course there remain
$&%f
with us alien governesses and the ultra-capable
American ladies to support the stationers and cover a
quire or so weekly with anathema against our abomin-
able climate, the graces and disgraces of fashionable
society and the questions without answers to the
domestic service problem.
ABOUT LETTERS AND POSSESSIONS 215
But given a reasonable pretext such as business or
love, how admirably now do the letter-writers comport
themselves ! and ever with that clear brevity which
should stamp the former excuse, while the latter glows
with sincerity, lacking the gush and reiterated epithet
which formerly were prominent in disfiguring the
epistolary interchange whenever love defaulters were
arraigned in court.
It is rare now for the educated many to present a
suit for breach of promise of marriage, more con-
stantly is its fulfilment the occasion for the public
delivery of the private desire, and legal authorities
have settled the formula of farewell to the dull and
uninteresting fiction of a demanded restitution of
rights which have proved wrongs.
Julia was wont to say, " Unless Eliza receives each
morning four letters from leading actresses which
commence ' dearest ' she looks unhappy."
Without contesting her point, which was of course
as absurd as exaggerated, I find some foundation for
it while turning over my boxes of letters. Why do I
keep these ? Not to prevent my executor from feeling
dull, for I have issued a special bequest for their
prompt burning.
But with the exception of H. G. Wells, who is of an
incorrigibly affectionate natufe (I must make a card
index of his loving adjectives), I discover that my
masculine correspondents are not quite so appreciative
as my feminine.
I make a selection from these with all diffidence,
finding amongst many interesting letters one from
Sir Johnstone Forbes-Robertson, with a rough sketch
from his pen of the Irving statue as it was originally
2i 6 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
intended to be, wearing a frock-coat with the masks
of tragedy and comedy leaning against a pile of books
or plays. Later, when all was readjusted, Sir John-
stone wrote to me :
i
" Every time I pass the site I rejoice we got our
way about that one. The statue would have been lost
on the Embankment. There he would have been with
several others ; at the back of the Portrait Gallery,
where by the way many of his friends are, he will be
alone, but hourly passed by vast crowds who loved
him."
I have been fortunate in a way in including doctors
and dentists amongst my friends, and I have always
been amused to learn that those patients on the free
list invariably keep their cabs waiting. One doctor I
know used to indulge my taste for entertainment by
writing my prescriptions in verse. I shall just hope he
doesn't read biography when I quote his last doggerel
to excuse some delayed remedy :
" 'Twas cruel to forget Eliza's tonic,
A lack of sympathy wellnigh Teutonic,
My addled brain is almost embryonic,
Soft before, its softness now is chronic.
But here in verse, I hail you all symphonic,
And gath'ring my scatter'd wits evolve a tonic."
I have managed somehow to retain my old friends
as well as to make new ones, but alas ! an exception
to this most delightful rule appears to be W. J. Locke,
whose books I faithfully read, whilst missing the man
in the flesh, but, by the way, I don't believe he has any,
at least none to speak of. Turning over my bundle I
ABOUT LETTERS AND POSSESSIONS 217
find so many notes from him and such nice ones that
I shall quote a few words to brave his anger.
" Although I only go in boats on the understanding
that no punting or rowing or horrid physical exercise
shall spoil my luxurious enjoyment, believe me there
is nothing I should enjoy more, and it is with very
sighful regret I have to give up the pleasant prospect
to see you at Cookham."
More promising was the following :
" I will abandon rural joys next Sunday. They were
so sloppy and dippy this last week-end, and I will
accept your invitation. Your parties are the pleasantest
I know. The birthday of the successor of Septimus is
dragging out a weary chrysalis existence in magazines,
and will not burst out until the spring. — W. J. LOCKE."
And his last proclamation allows the infringement
of his copyright :
" DEAR MRS. ARIA,
Quotation is the sincerest form of flattery, so
how can I resist ?
Your letter takes me back to the delightful evenings I
used to spend at your house. Oh those fugacious years.
I and mine are well ; I have settled down, I think
for good, in this jumble of wonders known as the
Cote d'Azur.
With kindest regards,
I am, yours sincerely,
W. J. LOCKE."
I yield to the temptation to print a letter I received
from Sir Arthur Pinero when I drew his attention to
2i8 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
some ignorant comments which had been printed in
a leading newspaper about the influence of Irving on
the stage.
We discovered that the writer was an expert on sport !
and yet I felt it was an outrage to permit his imperti-
nence to go unreprimanded.
However, Pinero wrote :
;< Some day perhaps I will write about dear Irving ;
but to engage in a newspaper controversy — for so it
would be made — in the * silly ' season is not to my
taste.
Very heartily I sympathise with your feelings in the
matter. The articles are one-sided and most un-
generous.
I ask after you often, and have been grieved to hear
you are not well. But I don't believe all I hear, and
so I hope you are the same bright creature I have
always known.
Yours ever,
ARTHUR PINERO/'
And how encouraged I have been in my admiration
for actresses. I remember once writing an article to
insist how worthy they were of all admiration, and
receiving the following acknowledgment from Violet
Vanbrugh :
" What a jolly article in the Express. I feel we all
owe you thanks and our love. I never or rather very
seldom see you, but in my heart there is always a warm
corner for you.
Yours affectionately,
VIOLET VANBRUGH. "
ARNOLD BENNETT
To face page 218
ABOUT LETTERS AND POSSESSIONS 219
And again from her I have a very delightful
note in which she mentions her pleasure at receiving
a small fragment from the robe which Irving wore as
Wolsey.
" How can I thank you ? You have given me some-
thing that I value more deeply than I can express. It is
dear and kind of you to have given it to me. I've had
it put into a special box with a glass cover which I am
going to have sealed up with a little inscription, written
by Harry, saying it is a piece of the dress worn by his
father as Cardinal Wolsey ; so it will not only give me
pleasure and pride in its possession, but it will also
belong to Prue, and will be always one of her greatest
treasures. — VIOLET VANBRUGH."
Rather a funny epistle came to me once from Arnold
Bennett after I had written to ask him of the chance
that a play of his which had not then been produced
might suit Laurence Irving.
" Many thanks for your letter of the 5th inst. which
arrived to-day. The play in question is called The
Great Adventure. One copy is in America and the
other is out somewhere in the vague void. As soon as
I get one of these back I will let you know. I heard
from Frank Vernon that Laurence Irving had heard
of the play from Dennis Eadie, and my impression
was, and is, that Eadie had a copy of it. If so, he might
hand it to Laurence Irving.
I always find that there are about a score of people
in London who know more about my plays than I do
myself. I write them, then they pass from me. I
220 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
shouldn't be at all surprised if you had a copy of that
play, somewhere in a reticule. Our return to London
shall be duly announced to you. Kindest regards
from us both.
Yours sincerely,
ARNOLD BENNETT. "
I always think one of the most amusing communi-
cations I had was from Barry Pain, though I have not
the least recollection what I wrote to him about, yet
I preserve his answer :
" Many thanks for your charming letter. I feel that
it is a letter which should be answered wittily.
I have left the above blank space in case anything
witty should occur to me at the last moment, even as
the evening papers leave space for late news. If it
perforce remains blank, please consider that though
stupid I am grateful, and very glad that you liked my
book.
Very truly yours,
BARRY PAIN."
Barry Pain should certainly have been paying me a
royalty for years, and I have endeavoured without
hope to point out to him his indebtedness, since all his
most profitable books have boasted a heroine named
" Eliza. " Yet not a halfpenny of fees have I been able
to extract from him, and secretly I am aware that his
" Eliza " series is not amongst his favourites, and
he is almost resentful of their obstinate longevity and
the suggestion that he is best known as their parent.
ABOUT LETTERS AND POSSESSIONS 221
It was after the Shakespeare Tercentenary perform-
ance which took place at Drury Lane when Sir Frank
Benson was knighted by the King that I wrote con-
gratulations to Sir George Alexander because he had
been prime mover in the whole proceedings, really
distinguished by general excellence.
I was thrilled by his reply, so faithful to the memory
of Irving :
" DEAR MRS. ARIA,
I am glad the thing touched you. I felt proud of
my profession, of our men and women. It was all done
by the actors, and if His spirit could see us, he will know
what we aimed at.
Yours ever,
GEORGE ALEXANDER."
I own amongst my possessions a little terra-cotta
bust done by Onslow Ford as a preparatory study for
the big statue of Irving as Hamlet, which now stands
in the Guildhall. It had not been quite decided
whether the figure should be bareheaded or possessed
of a hat, and this shows Irving in a hat with battle-
mented brim, which had fallen to some destruction ;
when I told Sir Thomas Brock of my distress at this
mishap, to my great joy he wrote to me :
" I will with pleasure repair the little terra-cotta
bust if you will send it round. "
If self-consciousness can be possessed of clay,
how proud that little bust should feel to have been
fashioned by Onslow Ford, R.A., and repaired by
Sir Thos. Brock, K.C.B.
222 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Another letter I cherish from Sir Thomas Brock
reads :
" DEAR MRS. ARIA,
I fully intended to ask you to pay a visit to the
Queen Victoria Memorial before the scaffolding was
removed, but the weather was so unfavourable that I
felt sure you would not care to risk the chance of
taking a severe chill. Even my clerk of works, tough
as he is, succumbed, and had to keep to his bed for
several weeks. Fortunately I escaped.
I am sending you these few lines to say that I shall
be at the Memorial on Tuesday next at 12.30, and if
you can spare time to call then, shall be delighted to
walk round the work with you, and to hear what you
think of it all.
Yours sincerely,
THOS. BROCK."
Kindly Sir Thomas ! I am the richer through his
generosity by a landscape painted in France by one of
his sons, and a life-like presentment of his own fine
head drawn by another.
At the time of the death of my sister Julia many
wonderful letters came to me which I purposely sup-
press, but I gaze proudly at some lines by Mrs. Belloc
Lowndes when referring to her last book, Twilight.
*
" Not perhaps since Henry James gave us the in-
imitable Daisy Miller has modern fiction presented the
character of a woman so sensitive, so innately innocent
in her faults and weaknesses, so inevitably tragic in
her fate as the heroine of this book, Margaret Capel.
SIR HENRY IRVING AS HAMLET
ONE OF THE FIRST STUDIES BY E. ONSLOW FORD, R.A. ,
THE FINISHED STATUE BEING NOW IN THE GUILDHALL.
To face page 222
I
ABOUT LETTERS AND POSSESSIONS 223
It is the finest thing Frank Danby has done by all
odds."
And another tribute from Arnold Bennett :
" She was a most stimulating and vital woman. I
had much admiration for her. She had many facets
upon which the light glinted. It is impossible that
some day, sooner or later, her personality should not
form the basis of a character in fiction."
I have often written in the Daily Telegraph, and
have frequently been in a way connected with it, and
I read now with some entertainment an old certificate
of merit from headquarters which runs :
" The Hon. Mr. Lawson is very much pleased with
Mrs. Aria's work and will be glad if she covers all the
things she suggests, after of course due notice to
Mr. Le Sage."
We do not exactly do these things now in newspaper
land!
Besides affection with correspondence to prove it, I
have collected substantial evidence that my unworthi-
ness has been well rewarded. Do I not own the
original of the silver casket all set with rubies and
emeralds from which the stage carpenter at the Lyceum
Theatre made copy to serve in the famous scene with
Portia and her wooers ?
There was once a bereaved husband who resented
the perpetual recollection of his wife, fostered by her
personal belongings which were enshrined in their
home.
" I can't forget her," he complained to his friend,
" everything reminds me of her ; what shall I do ? "
224 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
The friend, who had the conscience of a dealer in
works of art, replied relentlessly, with one business eye
on a Sheraton bureau and another on a genuine
" Tanagra " :
;< Sell the lot, obliterate all trace of her, that's the
way, my boy."
But there is to me some special charm in being near
the things which have been owned by those I loved.
I like to touch the chairs they have touched, to look at
the pictures they have treasured, and I gloried in the
acquisition of the thick heavy silk which formed
Irving's robe when he played Wolsey. It is of a
bright cerise in corded quality and was specially woven
and dyed for him in Italy. I am enriched also by the
Carrickmacross flounce which Irving wore on the
tunic when he played Cardinal Richelieu ; and Walter
secured for me the bandanna handkerchief he carried
on the last occasion of his appearance in The Bells, a
couple of nights before he died.
My Louis XV chandelier glowed down upon him,
and the old Chinese embroidered portiere upon which
super-teethed dragons gleam at me with hair and
tusks of thick golden thread, was once Irving's table-
cloth in the Stratton Street dining-room, while he gave
me a back view of a gleaming shoulder and golden
head painted by Dudley Hardy because its gorgeous
red drapery made righteous colour on my dark walls.
I have too the pearl and diamond pin which Queen
Victoria presented to Irving on the occasion of his ap-
pearing at Windsor Castle in Becket, and in my sitting-
room are disposed a dozen or more pieces of furniture
and ornaments which I bought at the sale at Christie's,
whence alack ! his Dante bust departed for the States.
ABOUT LETTERS AND POSSESSIONS 225
I have his enormous carved mirror into which I now
cast my reflections of the past and the present, whilst
I look beyond into a future when I may again meet,
bereft of all weakness, those I have best beloved.
Ever I feel it monstrous for biographers of dead
heroes to lay emphasis upon any physical infirmity
which fate or age may have brought to them. I don't
want to read that Gladstone in his senility whimpered
for more butter on his bread. I resent being asked to
consider Swinburne as an epileptic, Rossetti as ab-
normally thirsty, George Meredith as deaf, and Robert
Louis Stevenson fighting haemorrhage. Incurable
sentimentalism this may be, but I would not have my
eagles bereft of a single feather, and I am convinced
no good purpose is served by the revelation of every
ache and ailment which accompanied their flight to
immortality.
No living writer ever spoke more tenderly of an
illustrious dead than James Barrie when he wrote that
little memorial pamphlet in honour of George Meredith.
I can almost remember it without reference. The
empty coach which rolled up to the graveyard, while
the spirits of his heroes and heroines stood round the
empty door at Box Hill. And the grey figure revived
to youth, taking his trusty staff to stroll up the hill to
be met at the top by Robert Louis Stevenson ; a
memorable fancy beautifully worthy of its inspiration.
On consideration I really believe that the two letters
which I have received to excite most surprise from me
came from Marie Lloyd and George Meredith. Ye
gods ! what a juxtaposition ! and I hope that I am not
placed thus under Meredith's ban, " Horribly will I
haunt the man who dares to make a Memoir of me."
226 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
But ladies first, I must quote Marie Lloyd's note
which came to me in reply to a request that I might
publish her photograph in The World of Dress.
" Madam Aria has my permission to use my photo
in her edition of The World of Dress. — MARIE LLOYD."
The note from George Meredith inspired by a like
request :
" DEAR SIR,
I see no reason that my portrait should appear
in your magazine. GEORGE MEREDITH<»
But this demand had been made during the time I was
compiling The May Book in aid of the Charing Cross
Hospital, with the generous assistance of William
Heinemann.
The advisory board suggested it would add con-
siderably to the volume if it were illustrated by por-
traits of every author and artist who had lent aid.
The contents held many contributions from the most
prominently worthy ; few had said "No," and my
acquaintance with the notable had grown rapidly, to
include Henry James, in these days a bearded Henry
James, whom I had neighboured at a dinner-party.
My first impression of the author of What Maine Knew
which I had just then finished reading, was definitely
antagonistic, for he was denouncing actors and the
theatre and the play-going public, induced to such
blameful outlook by the reception given long ago to
his play Guy Domville.
And although I knew he was perfectly right, yet the
fine flower of my faith in the stage refused to fade
ABOUT LETTERS AND POSSESSIONS 227
until I came under the sway of his eloquence whilst I
hearkened to the perfect poetry of his language which
illuminated at some length a sunset and a twilight in
the Italy he loved. It was one of his smaller stories
of Italy which he gave me the privilege to use in The
May Book, where also I produced a poem by Sarah
Grand, whom I knew at the time of her triumph
with The Heavenly Twins ; some forgotten criticisms
of Edmund Kean by H. B. Irving, a fairy story by
Evelyn Sharp, and many pictures from many famous
artists.
I gained some insight into the joy of the prose writer
when committing poetry ; so many accredited in the
one path wandered with pleasure into the other, and
my chapters contained poems not only by George
Meredith, but by Thomas Hardy, Israel Zangwill,
Robert Hichens, Marie Corelli and Gilbert Parker,
with the more legitimate song by John Davidson, whose
Ballad of a Nun had made unforgettable mark upon my
memory.
I had known John Davidson well, and the sad story
of his troubles, and the saddest ending of them when
off some wild coast of Cornwall he stepped into the
deep waters of consolation.
Faithfully I have consulted Lady Wyndham as to
whether the following extract from a letter from Sir
Charles should appear, and she assures me she con-
siders it would be most ungracious to ignore such
words from such a man.
" Did I ever tell you you were an angel. If not, and
you did not see I felt it, you must have been lacking
in discernment. — CHARLES WYNDHAM."
228 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
How wrong of me to forget which special act of
mine was thus commended ! but I suspect it had some
connection with Miss Mary Moore, now regarded
respectfully as his most admirable successor, as Presi-
dent of the Actors' Benevolent Fund, beneath whose
gracious auspices I dined this year in the company
of all that is brightest, best and most charitable in my
favourite world of the profession.
CHAPTER XVII
ABOUT MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS
" "^f yP^OUR heart must be a very crowded
|[ thoroughfare," calculated an American
JL whilst he sat with me after I had rehearsed
to him a few of these reminiscences which were then
in preparation for their appearance.
I suspect that he was right, but I have confessed
candidly to sentiment as my personal weakness, and it
is as hard as unnecessary to deny the wide spread of
my interest in much and many I deem fit for admira-
tion. Why should I play the policeman and demand
anyone who attracts me to " pass along, please " ?
I have had my occasional lapses from the leisured
many, having suffered a few super-laborious years
when the finance see-saw landed me at up and down
points, which I hope I concealed as I zealously en-
deavoured. I suppose though my success in this
direction could not have been as absolute as I flattered
myself, for one day in the long ago when I was in an
omnibus and moved to pity at the exhausted, tired
face of a poorly clad opposite neighbour, I tendered
her a shilling with the suggestion that she might like
something to drink, whilst I apologised with a kindly :
" You look rather done up."
" Ah ! yes," she replied, wiping her hot face, " it's
'ard work washing counterpanes, ain't it ? "
229
230 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
That " ain't it " was rather destructive to my vanity,
but nevertheless gave me an excuse for smiling, never
unacceptable to me.
Somehow I do not convey the right impression in a
bus, and this was proved to me again last year after I
had attended a pseudo-political meeting in the garden
of Lord Leverhulme who had made special arrange-
ments that public conveyances should duly remove
all his friends, failing in their possession of motor-
cars.
'Plaining the dearth of taxis, I sat in a corner
opposite to a rubicund-visaged gentleman from York-
shire. He addressed me with all familiarity :
" I haven't been in London these three years, but
you used to be able to get trains at Hampstead ? "
I looked up at him with the alert interest which a
stranger always excites in me, and I persisted :
" But I want a taxi."
" Well, mum," he said, drawing a red handkerchief
over his damp head, " you're wrong, you should save
your money, and buy a quart."
It has been suggested, by the way, that I over-act
my part of laughing philosopher, but I have deter-
mined to remain unrepentant of my deep-rooted
inclination towards mirth rather than towards melan-
choly.
Few jests escape my easy beam, but I refused even
a glint when a callous victim to the cigarette habit
declined to attend her aged stepmother's funeral
because the graveyard bore the notice, " Smoking
strictly prohibited." Death is no topic for merriment,
however little missed may be the missing.
Ah ! me, my well-beloved family has dwindled to
ABOUT MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS 231
two, and sternly forbidding myself the sad retrospect,
I compare its record with that of the ten little nigger
boys, and prophesy its end, " And then there was
one."
Florrie, all unrebuked, may yet wear the mantle
of authorship, though upon her shoulders it may prove
super-ample, some youngster from her stock may
arise labelled " for literature," to deplore in due and
proper course the " awful tosh " his predecessors
published.
However, I have enjoyed much, and can chronicle
only now as abiding wants a pillar-box exactly opposite
my house and a fine grandchild upon the top
floor.
I labour less and always less, and gladly remember
that happiness at this chance was a failing of my earliest
youth, when at my busiest and most tired I would ask
Julia to inscribe upon my tombstone, planned to be of
the shape of a folded newspaper, a perversion of the old
charwoman's epitaph :
" Weep for me not, weep for me never,
I'm going to write nothing for ever and ever."
Meanwhile I sit at my window in Regent's Park
watching the rounded corner of the adjacent terrace
for the gallant stride of Dorothea Irving, who comes
almost daily from her house a few yards distant, to
voice some fine scheme for the betterment of baby-
land, upon which I advise as volubly as if I were
amongst the initiated in all the mysteries of mother-
craft.
Unless some luncheon party or matinee invites me
to greater activity outside my gates, I pass my time in
232 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
embroidering frocks for the little ones and trimming
hats for the girls, and I like to read all the newest
books, determined to prefer them to the older ones,
so that I may escape the accusation invariably hurled
at the upholders of the past.
Of course I pretend to be much younger than I am,
so that the already due announcement of my fifty-fifth
birthday will be greeted by " Not really."
I am conscious that I am rapidly becoming amongst
treats or penances to the younger generation, which
does not even knock at my door but walks straight in,
and I laugh that " kissing me is a national pastime
almost as popular as football," while of course
I am very proud the youngsters are not bored
by me.
" Tommy, if you are not a good boy I shall put you
into the Irving troupe," a poor distracted mother was
heard to threaten whilst on board with Irving crossing
over to New York.
Mothers and aunts and guardians amiably promise,
" If you are a good boy or a good girl you shall have
tea with Mrs. Aria during the holidays."
I am a place of entertainment, a point of pilgrimage
like St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey or the Zoological
Gardens, and I enjoy the fun of being so regarded,
while I hope I keep up the righteous standard of
supply of sweets, illustrated books and puzzles proper
to the state of a universal great-aunt.
Which is the relationship I own actually to one
sunny-faced Stephen, grandson of that sister Ellen I
mentioned on my first pages, and I suspect him of
heading straight for intellectual honours which may
i nscribe him on the family roll of fame. I know it is
ABOUT MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS 233
amongst my pleasures to take him to the theatre, and
although his shrieks of mirth at Charley's Aunt make
the jolliest music to my ears, I recognise more proudly
that some discrimination went to his comment on
Macbeth.
" It's very well to blame Macbeth," he had said,
wagging his golden head sagaciously, " but it was all
Mrs. Macbeth 's fault." Oh wise young judge !
Even while I enjoy the constant companionship
of my devoted daughter, early widowed, and but now
recovering from her too strenuous National Service,
I am sometimes perplexed at the thought of the best
employment for the remaining portion of my life,
and some infallible means to satisfy my unquench-
able desire to be amused — my low ambition to be
amusing.
Perhaps as an act of grace after meals — I have had
many splendid banquets of fun — I shall found a home
for disillusioned diarists, who, having heard of the
vast fortune acquired by Mrs. Asquith, have rushed
headlong into reminiscences. I shall invite this
miscreant-in-chief to subscribe, for I met her once at
Downing Street when her brilliant young daughter,
Elizabeth, Princess Bibesco, had in aid of some good
cause recited "If," which was then an epidemic hard
to avoid in any language at any entertainment, whilst
a parody of it also afforded some opportunity for
forbearance.
Mrs. Asquith and I had sat together to enjoy a
cigarette whilst I took the opportunity of congratulating
her, as the wife of a Prime Minister, on the courage
and wisdom which had gone to her unpopular invita-
tion to Poiret, king of the French world of dress, to
Q 2
234 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
come over here to design and display clothes. During
that period the entente cordiale was more preached
than practised, but none can deny that individuality
goes to the costumes of Mrs. Asquith, and that she
never fails to look unlike others, which is, after all, a
difficult task when no steamboat or airship arrives
without a consignment of models from the other
side ; and there is perennial magic in the word
model.
From a faithful follower comes just now a disturbing
line : "I know your weaknesses, and I hear you are
writing a book. I beseech you not to make it too
benevolent."
How impossible that it should be otherwise ! How
can I write spitefully about my friends, and I never
see my enemies if I recognise them, being unlike the
Irishman who, after a bloodthirsty round with a
fellow-citizen, was seen talking to him in Merrion
Square.
;< I thought you two were not on good terms," said
a mutual acquaintance, to receive answer :
" I hate the fellow, but if I don't speak to him, how
can I bust him ? "
I plead guilty of a desire to annoy none, and in the
spirit of Jack Horner who sat in the corner, convinced
he was a very good boy, I gaze at the testimonial which
accompanied an early Georgian knocker from Gertrude
Kingston :
" To Elia " — thus she always flatters me to a kinship
with Charles Lamb — " at whose door a friend has
never called in vain, I dedicate this antique bronze
ring."
HUGH WALPOLE
To face page 234
ABOUT MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS 235
How absurd in any case to feel unkind towards my
intimates, whom I have chosen for the affection I bear
for them, not for what they do but for what they are
and what they mean to me.
But since I cannot bear to be contradicted, in order
to secure some few whom I might reproach, I proffered
a request to an elect group, that I should be supplied
with a foreword to this book.
However, the attempt was not successful, but all
alike sent me notes of satisfaction at hearing of my
projected Memoirs — were they sinister notes on the
lines of that prayer — " Oh that mine enemy would
write a book ! >: Not a bit like it, I am convinced that
they were one and all as sincere in their good wishes
as they were obstinate in refraining from the privilege
I proposed.
Hugh Walpole, for example, whose rare company
and books I enjoy, and whose inscribed copy of The
Thirteen Travellers I am proud to possess since it
proclaims him my friend, failed brilliantly to acquiesce
in my plan.
" DEAR MRS. ARIA,
I'm honoured indeed that you should ask me
to write a preface to your memoirs. Honoured but
surprised. I, one of the heaviest tirading sons of a
parson, to write a foreword to what must be one of the
lightest-footed, gayest-hearted and cynical-eyed re-
cords of our time. No, no, but thank you for asking
me. I must be friskier than I had supposed.
Yours always,
HUGH WALPOLE."
236 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Arnold Bennett gave me a less encouraging reply :
" DEAR ELIZA ARIA,
Your letter catches me at the moment of leaving
England. I should love to oblige you, but I have sworn
off all forewords. Moreover, I think they do more
harm than good. Moreover, your Memoirs will be so
amusing, malicious and first-rate that they will require
no aid. Excuse me.
Yours sincerely,
ARNOLD BENNETT."
W. L. George is more hopeful in his :
" There is an old saying that it is unwise to take
coals to Newcastle ; an obvious parallel is that it is
undesirable to take introductions to the introducer.
You are so ideally fitted to introduce yourself, and you
are so much more likely to make a good impression,
that I will ask you to allow me to refuse to have any-
thing to do with foisting you upon the public. I am
sure that it will not resist this foisting, if it is wise . . .
but hush ! This is beginning to turn into an intro-
duction after all."
H. G. Wells is characteristically flattering ; but
I have already quoted his decision.
" No prefaces, Darling. Beauty unadorned is
adorned the most. Love. — H. G."
I am of so amiable a spirit that I will forgive George
Moore for an attitude which seemed to me at best to be
unsympathetic. I will grant unto him the respect he
desires, bowing to his objection to having his letters
published in " such a light narrative " as mine. What
a sweet spirit of forbearance do I display in my com-
ST. JOHN ERVINE
To face page 236
ABOUT MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS 237
plete pardon of him, for his letters were quite discreet,
and I have in my memory a suspicion that once he was
not very keenly sensitive to the feelings of some
distinguished in the tanks of literary Ireland.
I turn, however, with complete satisfaction from his
peevish protests to the thought of that fellow-country-
man of his, St. John Ervine, whom I might well envy
the pointed pen which he digs into the sensitive
nerves of all the worst actors and turns to rend merci-
lessly a few dramatists he may disapprove.
As a matter of fact he is one of the few dramatic
critics I have known since Clement Scott died, who
really likes his job. Most of the others condescend to
it, yawning themselves in and out of their stalls, suffer-
ing their self-sought tasks sadly, never failing to men-
tion the hurry of their dinner or the delay of their
supper. William Archer and J. T. Grein may yet be
marked enthusiasts.
But St. John Ervine frankly enjoys the theatre,
deems it of high consequence, and is pleased to have
chance to report well on it.
A very popular and beautiful actress who sometimes
does her work very carelessly wrote to him reproaching
him for the condemnation of her art in a clever play.
She said she had a high position on the stage and was
entitled to be treated with respect by him.
His reply was she would get his respect when she
had earned it.
It was he who said of Mrs. Patrick Campbell's Lady
Macbeth, when James K. Hackett revived this tragedy
at the Aldwych, that " Mrs. Campbell must have stayed
at home and sent Mrs. Cornwallis West in her place."
No one would have enjoyed this quip as much as
238 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who has a quaint sense of
humour, and once in the long ago greeted me at the
Savoy grill room :
" Who are you, I know your face, but I cannot
remember your name. Tell me your name/'
" Absurd, I am the oldest inhabitant of the stalls,
the lady Methuselah on the mat at the Box Offices,
and as well known as the Tower of London. "
" Well, if you won't say who you are I shall be sure
you are Mrs. C. S., or Bloody Mary."
But to continue the review of my personal surround-
ings, I am happy to own that it would be hard for me
not to say something nice about Janet Courtney,
wife of W. L., learned and accomplished lady, whom I
admire for her tolerance of my frivolity, for her ad-
mirable eloquence and for her rare virtue of a whole-
hearted sincerity, all inducing me to forgive her one
vice, an inalienable attachment to a snorting Pekingese.
At least another two dozen would I add to my roll
of good-fellowship, but it is obvious that I cannot
enumerate all. Yet I would not omit Cunninghame
Graham, whose grace of movement equals his grace
of words, who looks like some old grandee, and bears
upon him the indelible marks of race and culture ; nor
can I forget Mrs. Theodore McKenna, whose kindness
to those in trouble is proverbial.
Neither can I leave out beautiful Beatrice Hackett ;
although but recently my friend, she is a most welcome
one,
" Who runs to help me when I'm ill,
And does my treasured vases fill "
with the most beautiful flowers ; few indeed more
beautiful than she herself, who owns a gentleness
ABOUT MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS 239
of voice, a bloom of skin, a slenderness of ankle and
wrist to gratify my senses with those rare furs and soft
laces and full drooping feathers she usually affects.
Then I must add Mrs. Dummett, the best of host-
esses, never tired of proving this at luncheons and
tea-parties, which manage to entice the most worthy
and entertaining, who inhabit the upper stratum of our
ever dear Bohemia.
And I would chronicle amongst my " lookers-in "
Gladys Unger, writer of plays, married to the Persian
poet Ardarschir ; she is a bright and clever creature,
and amongst the few women dramatists who prosper ;
and Gladys Cooper, radiant figure, all too seldom
present, since she lives persistently in the country, yet
as a lover of sweetness and light I am glad she lives
anywhere ; or Amy Brandon Thomas, again a beautiful
woman, and daughter of two old friends.
It would appear as I recall them that most of my
friends have attained artistic success in some branch or
another, even the soldiers and sailors I know bear some
blushing or unblushing honour upon them, but neither
the military nor the naval gent affects my company
much, except perhaps Lieut. -Colonel H. D. Foulkes,
who is an habitue here, as an old friend of my son-in-law.
I never see him without visualising the romantic, almost
Biblical, circumstance of his meeting with my daughter
in Nigeria, where deeming her ill-nourished upon tinned
food he sent her from the State where he ruled a whole
flock of sheep and a lamb new born on their journey.
I shake my head again ; it grows every moment
more impracticable that idea that I should be male-
volent. Away with it, and the counsel of imperfection
which proposed it.
240 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
In what adverse spirit could I write of the two
Vanbrughs. I now see them seldom, but I have known
them for many years. My last meeting with Violet
Vanbrugh was at the remarkable gathering of actors
and actresses assembled at the opening of the theatre
attached to the Dramatic Academy founded by Tree.
The ceremony was well graced by His Royal Highness
the Prince of Wales, who dispensed his magnetic
personal charm alike upon his speech and upon his
subsequent converse with Ellen Terry and Lady Hare.
It was upon that occasion that we had the first pre-
sentation of Sir James Barrie 's one-act play, Shall we
Join the Ladies ? and what a good play it is ! Here's
to its extension, long overdue.
I have only met Sir James Barrie once or twice in
my life. He has a very detached and silent manner,
which makes me feel it would be very unseemly to
interrupt his thoughts, and that he can sit quiescent
during a rehearsal of his own work, I know, for I saw him
thus unemployed, whilst H. B. Irving was rehearsing
The Professor's Love Story, and Fay Compton, looking
adorably pink and pretty, was enacting heroine, a task
she undertook for Barrie triumphantly in Mary Rose
and in Quality Street.
Sir Arthur W. Pinero, especially associated in my
mind with Irene Vanbrugh, who scored so con-
spicuously in his Gay Lord Quex, Letty, and His House
in Order, I have always secretly adored since the days
when Irving, after his severe illness in Glasgow, was
about to produce Robespierre. He wrote then offering
him all his services at rehearsals, thinking thus to save
Irving much fatigue.
I travelled recently with Irene Vanbrugh from the
CORNER OF FITZROY SQUARE.
SKETCHED FROM MY WINDOW BY C. R. W. NEVINSON.
To face page 240
ABOUT MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS 241
river ways, when her arms were filled with dogs and
eggs and flowers, all offered to me freely, and accepted
gratefully minus the dogs.
Having shaken my head decidedly at the proposition
to blame anybody I like, I may proceed gaily to pat
them all on the shoulders with one pat more for Gerald
Lawrence and his wife, the former having been Irving 's
leading man during his last years, and quite the best
amateur chauffeur I gratefully entrust myself to, and
the latter, Fay Davis, an excellent actress.
I threatened in my first chapter I could set down
naught in malice, and I have come up to my estimate,
and will again in record of two more appreciated
friends " in the brush trade " ; of Fred Stratton, who
is spiritual and imaginative while varying his subjects
from the kingdom of the Divine to a land of fairy
fancies in sunlit woods, and C. R. W. Nevinson,
who would come often to sit with me in my
spacious flat in Fitzroy Square where I mischiev-
ously rejoiced if a not-quite-right omniscient looked
round the walls up to the high ceiling to pro-
nounce upon " the wonderful dignity attaching to the
eighteenth-century work of the Adam Brothers."
The last time my sister Julia ever went out was to
inspect that room which I had hung with black
watered paper. Asking her opinion upon this as a
background to gold-framed pictures, she smiled in-
dulgently with, " I like it very much, it reminds me of
court sticking plaster."
C. R. W. Nevinson loved that room, but he knew well
it was not the work of Adam Bros. He knows most
things in the world of art does " Richard, " including
the best method to introduce the catalogues of his
242 MY SENTIMENTAL SELF
shows, and he approved the apartment thoroughly,
mostly for a view it granted him of an opposite corner
which undoubtedly did owe its existence to the Adam
Bros. Here at the window he stood one day to do
honour to a building he liked especially. I scarcely
dare to reproduce his typical sketch, since I know him
supremely exacting, and I am also aware that he did
the thing for me just hurriedly in a few moments,
when he was most amiably disposed. He is not always
quite amiably disposed, has a grievance or so against
international dealings, will denounce France as " the
cocotte of Europe/' and America as a " hag-ridden
country of plumbers/'
Yet C. R. W. Nevinson is a great favourite of mine,
and I have much regard for his pretty wife, who looks
like the daughter of some Norse king, very fearless in
her glance, with pale hair and high cheek bones, and
much activity to her movements.
Stephen McKenna is of the authors I regard
affectionately, and I shall set him a little apart, as
indeed he has set himself, in his courteous reply to my
proposition that he should introduce this volume.
But not only by reason of that is he set somewhat apart,
his work is a little unlike that of other novelists by
reason of its humour and its concentration on a dashing
note of society peculiar to these times.
His Sonia and Barbara are creations and recreations.
Yet while I reflect seriously upon Stephen
McKenna 's special talent for presenting the ultra-
modern girl, I rejoice that nothing of her goes to the
making of my dear Elizabeth Irving, and I remember
a letter from her father, written during a holiday
time :
ELIZABETH IRVING
To face page 242
ABOUT MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS 243
" Whenever I look at that child I am reminded of
the beautiful things you have said of her, and that it is
my duty to keep her worthy. Bless you. — H."
Elizabeth is pre-eminently worthy of all things
beautiful. Elizabeth, straight from school at the age
of sixteen, tripped a dainty measure on the boards as
Queen Titania, looking like the queen of all the fairies
in the wide wide world of imagination. Elizabeth, a
slim joyous creature with a yard of auburn hair, is now
flirting with the films, with dreamful intervals of
Trilby and more realistic adventure with the O.U.D.S.
at Oxford as Margrete in The Pretenders. Perhaps she
has a far-away vision of herself in the garb of Ophelia,
but she does not talk about this while she sits on the
arm of my chair in a more serious consideration of
the importance of dancing, and the charms of fashion,
now and again showing me glimpses of her higher
ideals of life, giving echo of those dreams spelt for
her in the heart of her adored and adoring father.
But my youngest friend of all is Pamela Mary Irving,
daughter of Laurence and Rosalind Irving, splendid
example of the race to come ! Opposite the old mill
she lies now in the garden of a thousand roses, crooning
in her perambulator at the apple blossoms on the old
tree, beneath which H. B. Irving and I have so often
sat to talk of his father, whilst we watched the mus-
tering of the boats below in the Harbour Bay of
Whitstable.
THE END
INDEX
Aberdeen, Marquis of, 109
Academy, The Royal, 42
Academy of Acting, The Royal,
146
Actors' Benevolent Association,
24, 228
Adam Brothers, The, 241, 242
Admirable Crichton, The, 144,
183
Albery, James, 23, 24
Alexander, Sir George, 141,
200-205, 221
Alexander, Lady, 202
Alexandra, Queen, 100, 159
America, 59, no, 114, 118, 135,
142
Anderson, Arthur, 17
Anderson, David, 92
Anderson, Percy, 17
Ann Veronica, 174
Archer, William, 237
Aria, David, 28, 45
Aristocrat, The, 203
Aristotle, 60
Arnold, Matthew, 139
Artist's Model, The, 21
Artists' Rifle Association, 41
Ascot, 42
Ash well, Lena, 127
Asquith, Mrs., 233, 234
Astor, Lady, 167
As You Like It, 154
Austin, L. F., 141
Autolycus, 8
Babe of Bohemia, The, 54
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 97
Baku, Governor of, 49
Ballad of a Nun, The, 227
Barrie, Sir James, O.M., 240
Barrymore, Ethel, 91
Bat, The, 7
Beaconsfield, Lord, 47
Beaumont, Muriel, 184
Becket, 141, 224
Beckley, Beatrice, 163
Bed of Roses, The, 169
Beerbohm, Max, 157
Beeton, Mrs., 61
Beeton & Co., Messrs., 35
Begbie, Harold, 160, 180-183
Belisario, Miss, 9
Bells, The, 101, 103, 155, 224
Bennett, Arnold, 35, 36, 219,
220, 223, 236
Bennett, Robert, 210, 211
Benson, Sir Frank, 123, 221
Bernhardt, Sarah, 177
Bibesco, Elizabeth, Princess, 233
Bill of Divorcement, A, 199
Bismarck, Prince Otto L. E. von,
51
Black and White, 43
Bland-Sutton, Lady, 159
Blight, 191
Boer War, The, 55, 73
Book Bills of Narcissus, 43
Bourchier, Arthur, 152, 179, 187
Braithwaite, Lilian, 178, 188,
198-200
British Museum, The, 57
Brock, Sir Thomas, 151, 152,
221, 222
Brook Kerith, The, 195
245
246
INDEX
Brooke, Rupert, 2
Brooks, Reginald Shirley, 17
Brough, Lionel, 152
Brough, Sydney, 25
Browning, Robert, 84
Burnham, Viscount, C.H. (Hon.
Harry Lawson), 223
Butt, Madame Clara, 178
Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 188,
237, 238
Captain Brassbound's Conver-
sion, 154
Carlyle, Thomas, 7, 46, 52
Carr, J. Corny ns, 132
Cat and the Cherub, The, 107
Cattermole, George, 100
Chant, Mrs. Ormiston, 43
Charley's Aunt, 210, 223
Christie's, 65, 224
Church Army, The, 181
Cleveland Club, The, 67
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 152
Coliseum, The, 76, 202
College of Preceptors, The, 6
Collier, Constance, 177, 178, 181
Collins, Arthur, 72, 73, 75
Collins, M. E., 7
Compton, Fay, 240
Concert Pitch, 10
Confession of Ursula Trent, The,
169
Cook, John, 45
Cooper, Sir Alfred, 123
Cooper, Gladys, 239
Corelli, Marie, 117, 227
Coriolanus, 106, 142
Corlett, John, 17
Coue, fimile, 176
Court Circular, The, 84
Courtney, W. L., 186-192, 238
Courtney, Mrs. W. L., 238
Co vent Garden Market, 16
Cowen, Frederick, 206
Crossley, Madame Ada, 66
Crawford, Emily, 211, 212
Crawfurd, Oswald, 43
Cri du People, 1 1
Crime and Punishment, 153
Cuckoo, The, 17
Czerny, Karl, 6, 206
Daily Chronicle, The, 42
Daily Graphic, The, 133
Daily Telegraph, The, 92, 186,
190, 223
Daisy Miller, 222
Dante, 106, 112, 135, 224
Davidson, John, 227
Davies, Colonel Newnham, 17
Davis, Fay, 201, 241
Dear Brutus, 184
De Lara, Isidore, 93, 205-209
Diamond Express, The, 76
Dickens, Charles, 9, 46, 112
Doctor Barnardo's Homes, 181
Doctor Phillips, 22, 54, 55, 194
Dostoieffsky, Feodore, 153
Drury Lane Theatre, 70, 73,
141, 221
Duchess of Padua, The, 112
Dulac, Edmund, 208
Du Maurier, George, 184
Du Maurier, Sir Gerald, 183-185
Dummett, Mrs., 239
Eadie, Dennis, 219
East Lynne, 95
Edward, King, 126, 132, 160
Edwardes, George, 106
Eliot, George, 46
Ellis, Mr. and Mrs. Walter, 84
Epstein, Jacob, 213
Ervine, St. John, 237
Esmond, H. V., 201
Esther Waters, 195
Euripides, 189
Evans, Mary, 46
Express, The, 218
Fagan, James Bernard, 170-172
Farquhar, George, 123
INDEX
247
Farrar, Dean, 89
Father, My, 3-7, u, 18
Faust, 136
Fenner, Robert, 97
Floradora, 21
Foley, John Henry, 152
Forbes-Robertson, Sir John -
stone, 215, 216
Ford, Onslow, R.A., 221
Forster's Life of Charles Dickens,
9
Fortnightly Review, The, 190
Foulkes, Lt.-Col. H. D., 239
France, Anatole, 191
Frankau, Arthur, 27
Frankau , Julia (' * Frank Danby "),
5, 7-12, 15-17, 22, 27, 28, 32,
33, 54-69, 81, 104, 194, 195,
215,222,223,231,241
Frederick, The Empress, 91
Frith, W. P., 159
Froude, James Anthony, 52
Fulton, Mary, 190, 191
Fussie, 92, 96
Gaiety Girl, The, 21
Gallienne, Richard le, 42, 43
Garrick Club, The, 61
Gay, John, 22
Gay Lord Quex, 240
Geisha, The, 21
Gemier, 164
Gentlewoman, The, 33
George, W. L., 161, 168-170,
Ghosts, 57
Gilmour, Mr., 6, 10
Girl from Kay's, The, 21
Girl of the Period, The, 45
Gladstone, W. E., 47, 48, 50,
51, 143, 152, 225
Glenesk, Lord, 139
Gosse, Edmund, C.B., 193
Graham, R. B. Cunninghame,
238
Great Adventure, The, 219
Greek Slave, The, 21
Grein, J. T., 57, 237
Grossmith, George, 140
Grundy, Sydney, 37
Guiliano, in
Guy Domville, 202, 226
Hackett, James K., 161-165,
237
Hackett, Mrs., 164, 238
Hackney, Mabel, 153, 155, 156,
204
Halstan, Margaret, 130
Hamilton, Emma, Lady, 57, 64
Hamilton, Henry, 76
Hamilton, John McClure, 114
Hamlet, 116, 134, 144, 145, 184,
208
Hanbury, Lily, 178
Hannibal, 106, 191
Hardy, Dudley, 224
Hardy, Thomas, O.M., 227
Hare, Sir John and Lady, 90,
240
Harris, Sir Augustus, 73, 203
Harris, Frank, 57, 59
Hathaway, Ann, 117
Hatton, Joseph, 88, 142
Hawtrey, Sir Charles, 184
Heartbreak House, 171
Hearth and Home, 35, 37
Heart of a Child, The, 69
Heavenly Twins, The, 227
Heine, Heinrich, 197
Heinemann, William, 226
Henry VIII, 179
Hichens, Robert, 100, 227
His House in Order, 240
His Majesty's Theatre, 152, 172,
178, 179
Holbein, Hans, 179
Holland, Hon. Sydney, 123
Howard, Mrs. Bronson, 23
Howard and Son, 203
Hugo, Victor, 18
Hunt, Violet, 44
248
INDEX
Ibsen, Henrik, 57, 89
Incubus, The, 153
Independent Theatre, The Com-
mittee of the, 57
In Search of Egeria, 188
Irving, Elizabeth, 146, 242,
243
Irving, Sir Henry, 84-143, 152,
156, 157, 162, 179, 183, 200,
203, 204, 221, 224, 240,
243
Irving, Henry B., 99, 102, no,
141, 142, 144-154, l63> J88,
201, 204, 219, 227, 243
Irving, Mrs. H. B., 99, 155, 204,
231
Irving, Laurence, 87, 91, 92, 95,
96, 100, 112, 153-157, 162,
163, 204, 219
Irving, Laurence (the younger),
146, 152, 243
Irving, Pamela Mary, 243
James, Henry, 202, 222, 226
Jewish Society, 32
John, Augustus, 58
Johnson, Doctor, 207
Joseph in Jeopardy, 55
Journalism, Dress, 35
Journalism, Shop, 35
Jowett, Professor Benjamin, 87,
88, 187
Kean, Edmund, 116, 179, 227
Kelly, Renee, 69, 167
Kendal, Mrs., 189, 200
King Arthur, 131
King, Mrs., 186
Kinglake, A. W., 52
Kingston, Beatty, 85
Kingston, Gertrude, 25, 26, 200,
234
Kipling, Rudyard, 191
Kit Marlowe, 188
Knight, Joseph, 202
Knutsford, Lord, 123
Labouchere, Rt. Hon. Henry, 17
Laf argue, Paul, n
Lafargue, Madame Paul, 10, n
Lamb, Charles, 234
Landor, Walter Savage, 46
Lawrence, Thomas, 100
Legion d'Honneur, The, 164
Lehmann, Liza, 21, 66, 206
Lehmann, R. C., 187
Leicester, Earl of, 119
Leno, Dan, 38
Le Sage, Sir John M., 223
Les Hannetons, 153
Letty, 240
Leverhulme, Lord, 230
Leverson, Ada, 57
Lincoln Handicap, The, 28
Linton, Sir James, 37
Linton, Mrs. Lynn, 44-46, 48
Literary Man's Bible, The, 190
Little Theatre, The, 25
Lloyd, Marie, 225, 226
Locke, W. J., 216, 217
Londesborough, Lord and Lady,
41,42
London, Bishop of, 151
Louis the Eleventh, 155
Loveday, H. J., 128
Lovelace, 153
Lowndes, Mrs. Belloc, 59, 60,
222
Lucy, Sir Thomas, 118
Luddingtons, The, 7
Lumley, Gertie, 108
Lyceum Theatre, The, 88, 90,
99, 222
Lyons Mail, The, 155
Lyric Club, The, 41, 42
Macbeth, 123, 162, 163, 233
McKenna, Stephen, 242
McKenna, Mrs. Theodore, 238
Macmillan, Messrs., 56
Manet, 18
Manfred, 96
Manoeuvres of Jane, The, 26
INDEX
249
Marconi, G., 79
Markheim, 188
Marks, Harry H., 37
Marx, Karl, 10
Mary Rose, 240
Mauclair, Camilla, 207
May Book, The, 226, 227
May, Edna, 68
Medicine Man, The, 100
Melbourne, Lord, 52
Menpes, Mortimer, 37
Merchant of Venice, The, 103,
112
Meredith, George, 225-227
Messager, Andre, 206
Michaud, Professor, 50
Miles, Frank, 100
Milholland Family, The, 78-83
Millard, Evelyn, 41
Milward, Jessie, 108
Miracle, The, 199
Monarchs I have Met, 85
Moore, George, 18, 57, 192-197,
236
Moore, Mary, 23, 24, 27, 228
Morning Chronicle, The, 44
Mother, My, 5, 9, n, 12, 20,
22, 31
Munday, Luther, 41, 42
Murillo, 4
Muscovitch, Maurice, 152
Music, Royal Academy of, 41
Nares, Owen, 178
National Gallery, The, 4
National Theatre, The, 105
Neilson, Julia, 178, 201
Nelson, Lord, 64
Nelson's Legacy, 57
Nevinson, C. R. W., 214, 241,
242
Newdigate, The, 16
New York, 37, 78, 153, 164, 232
New York Herald, 163
New York Tribune, 78
Nicholas I, Tsar, 52
Northumberland, Duke of, 161
Novikoif, Madame, 47-53, 78
Qdeon, 163
Old Wives9 Tale, The, 36
Oliver Twist, 9, 178
On the Side of the Angels, 188
O.P. Club, 43
Ophelia, 243
Othello, 113, 162, 163, 172
Our Mutual Friend, 9
Outline of History, 175
" Owen Hall," 5, 7, 9, 12, 15-22,
31, 65, 66, 105
Oxford and Cambridge Boat
Race, 42
Pain, Barry, 220
Pain, Mrs. Barry, 38
Pall Mall Gazette, The, 347
Pan, 15, 16, 18
Panton, Mrs. J. E., 33, 158
Paris, 12, 18, 37, 164
Parker, Sir Gilbert, 227
Parker, Louis N., 118
Parkinson, Joe, 88
Pastiche and Prejudice, 61
Pater, Walter, 192
Patmore, Coventry, 46
Peace, Charles, 103
Pearson, Sir Arthur, 39
Pemberton, Max, 37
Peter Ibbetson, 178, 181
Peter the Great, 87, 91, 99, 100,
153
Phillips, Stephen, 140
Phoenix, The, 17
Pigs in Clover, 55
Pinero, Sir Arthur, 42, 62, 77,
88, 189, 217, 218, 240
Plato, 51
Plough, The, 191
Plymouth, The Earl of, 203
Pope, The, 92
Pretenders, The, 153, 243
Price of Peace, The, 71
250
INDEX
Prince of Wales, H.R.H. The,
240
Prisoner of Zenda, The, 165
Prodigal Son, The, 141
Professor's Love Story, The, 240
Punch, 58
Purachatra, Prince of Siam, 90
Quality Street, 240
Raffles, 184
Ragged School Union, The, 181
Raleigh, Cecil, 17, 18, 70-77
Reading, Lord, 83
Reform Club, The, 88
Reid, Whitelaw, 78
Review of Reviews, The, 81
Reynolds, Walter, 203
Richard II, 177, 179
Robespierre, 240
Robinson Crusoe, 191
Robsart, Amy, 119
Romano's, 17
Romney, George, 57
Rossetti, D. G., 225
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 196
Royal Institute, The, 149
Runaways, The, 25
Ruskin, John, 46
Russia, 47, 51, 154, 173, 176
St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, 149
Saintsbury, H. A., 164
Salaman, Charles, 40, 206
Salaman, Malcolm, 33, 34, 40-42
Salinus, Professor, 68
Salvation Army, The, 54, 181
Samuel, Sir Herbert, 83
Sargent, John S., 100, 114, 174
Saturday Review, The, 45
Savoy Theatre, The, 147
Scharrer, Irene, 160
School for Scandal, The, 179
Scott, Clement, 86, 92, 93, 237
Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The,
200
Secret Investigation Depart -
ment, The, 147
Seddon, Richard, 109
Sergeant Brue, 21
Shakespeare, William, 75, 112,
117, 119, 150, 178, 207, 221
Shall we Join the Ladies ?, 240
Sharp, Evelyn, 227
Shaw, George Bernard, 57
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 41, 43, 84
" Shifter, The," 17
Shylock, 85, 103, 152
Silver, Captain, 25
Skipworth, F. Markham, 7
Skoboleff, 52
Smith, John Raphael, 56
Socialism, 18, 70, 104, 156
Solomon, Lady, 80
Sphinx's Lawyer, The, 16, 54
Sporting Times, The, 17, 194
" Stalled Ox," 17
Star, The, 60
Stead, William T., 80-82
Stephens, Pottinger, 17
Sterne, Laurence, 197
Stevenson, R. L., 188, 225
Stoker, Bram, 88, 128
Stratford-on-Avon, 116
Stratton, Fred, 241
Strike at Arlingford, The, 57
Suffield, Lord, 91
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 206
Swinburne, Algernon Charles,
93> 225 I
Tate Gallery, The, 100
Taylor, " Babs," 167
Temple, Hope, 206
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 106,
141, 142
Terriss, Ellaline, 68
Terriss, William, 108, 109
Terry, Edward, 203
Terry, Ellen, 42, 88, 100, 189
Terry, Fred, 201
Terry, Marion, 188
INDEX
251
Thackeray, William Makepeace,
46
Thirteen Travellers, The, 235
Thomas, Amy Brandon, 239
Thomas, Brandon, 239
Thompson, Alfred, 15
Three Arts Club, The, 127
Thurtell and Weare Case, The,
102
Times, The, 61
Toole, John, 88, no
Traill, H. D., 100
Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm,
88, 105, 162, 172, 178, 179,
189, 240
Tree, Lady, 188, 240
Trilby, 243
Triumph of Time, The, 92
Truth, 210, 212
Twain, Mark, 159
Twelfth Night, 170, 171
Twilight, 8, 69, 222
Two Roses, The, 200
Tyndall, John, 52
Typhoon, The, 153
Ugala, Prince of Siam, 90
Undine, 188
Unger, Gladys, 239
Vanbrugh, Irene, 240
Vanbrugh, Violet, 218, 219, 240
Vassar College, 79
Venus de Milo, 33
Verestchagin, 52
Vernon, Dorothy, 124
Vernon, Frank, 219
Vestris, Madame, 100
Vezin, Herman, 17
Victoria, Queen, 52, 108, 140,
151,224
Voysey, Charles, 46
Wagner, Richard, 192, 193
Wain, Louis, 21
Walkley, A. B., 60-62
Walpole, Hugh, 235
Walter, 115, 116, 128, 224
Ward, James, 56
Ward, William, 56
Warden, A. J., 33, 34
Waterloo, 86, 152, 155
Watts, George Frederick, 65
Webs of Penelope, The, 188
Wells, Ernest, 17
Wells, H. G., 173-176, 215,
236
Wells, Mrs. H. G., 176
Wesley, John, 135
West, Mrs. Cornwallis, 237
Westminster Abbey, 22, 105,
142
What Maisie Knew, 226
Whistler, James McNeill, 41, 99,
114
White Heather, 72, 73, 75
Who's Who, 66
Widowers' Houses, 57
Wilde, Oscar, 15, 16, 54, 112
Wilde, Willie, 15, 16, 33
Wolf, Lucien, 50
Woman, 35, 36
Wood, J. S, 33, 34
World, The, 16
World of Dress, The, 37, 38,
226
Wyndham, Sir Charles, 23-26,
184, 227
Wyndham, Lady, 23, 227
Yates, Edmund, 16
Yoke, The, 175
Zangwill, Israel, 227
Zola, Emile, 18
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